by Michael C. Dorf
As Republican politicians continue to push the improbable (but not completely ruled out by the evidence) hypothesis that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in a lab leak (or, in the fever dreams of their conspiracy theorists, as a bioweapon), new evidence has emerged suggesting a specific species as the more likely zoonotic origin: DNA from the (illegal) Wuhan live animal market that has been the focus of the most attention points to raccoon dogs as a possible source. I say "possible" because the evidence is raccoon dog DNA and COVID-19 in samples taken from the live market very early in the pandemic; it's possible that the raccoon dogs were infected after COVID-19 had already begun to spread from some other source, but given that other coronaviruses can spread from raccoon dogs to humans, the raccoon dog hypothesis merited a recent story in The NY Times.
Let's begin with the obvious: raccoon dogs (which are closely related to foxes, wolves, and dogs but not raccoons) are adorable (although definitely not suitable as pets).
At this point in our tale, I expect readers to feel outrage at the fact that some people in China eat raccoon dogs and other cute animals, including the kinds of dogs many people keep as pets. That is outrageous on moral grounds--slaughtering and eating a raccoon dog or a Labrador retriever feels only a step removed from cannibalism. It is also alarming on public health grounds, given the tendency of deadly diseases to jump from the particular sorts of wild animals that some people in China regard as delicacies to humans.
So be outraged. But try not to be selectively outraged.