Mind you after having spend 20 days of China, their hygiene system is not so bad. There are areas where it is behind but the hospital i visited (for*hum hum* some stomach issues) was technically well equiped and well staffed, better than some western hospitals. It is a different health system (speed and efficiency vs anonymity and patient individual care) but i had my blood results in 30 min when the same would have taken 2 days in France. Was it because i was a turist, i dunno but still.
Futhermore, every single of their restaurant has a hygiene quotation plastered at the entry (something you don't have in the west). It's up to you if you want to eat in a level D or a level A cleanliness restaurant.
Beside that they all use mask and gloves, even in remote areas, to serve you meal, something that is not seen there.
Paradoxicaly the meat is sometimes left in a plate on the ground.
A lot of paradoxes, this country.
The thing that explains the emergence of pathogens is mostly their live food markets with plenty of species and plenty of cramped people (cramped because well, it's China). But it could have happened elsewhere. We had our share of alerts (bird flu). Our supposed industrial processes doesn't protect us from foood borne diseases and certainly not from a virus that has decided to go recombinant. The thing is that we handle less exotic species so are less at risk to see a weird recombinant emerge.
But we have other issues that we shouldn't be proud of
Whooping cough bacteria are becoming smarter at colonizing and feeding off unwitting hosts -- whether they have been vaccinated or not -- strengthening calls for a new vaccine.
www.sciencedaily.com
Microbiological and epidemiological information relating to multi-drug resistant gonorrhoea (MDRGC) in England, the first case being reported in March 2018.
www.gov.uk
