The WHO, among other authorities, has gone on record saying all “fake news” about coronavirus cures must be suppressed. The only true cure, it appears, is the Western medical establishment, with its resource-intensive hospitals, doctors and nurses, ICU beds and oxygen tanks, ventilators and intubation, N-95 masks and plastic face shields. Nothing else will do.
The modern hospital as an institution probably started in Europe during the plague of the 13th century, when monks in Christian monasteries put aside buildings in their premises to cure the sick. They also tended herbal gardens and grew their own medicinal plants, so they were ideally placed to cure those with life-threatening diseases. Due to their austere schedules and lifestyles, limited social contact with the outside world, as well as lack of sexual and physical contact due to vows of renunciation, it is possible they did not contract infectious diseases as easily as laypeople.
According to Wikipedia, “Towards the end of the 4th century, the ‘second medical revolution’ took place with the founding of the first Christian hospital in the eastern Byzantine Empire by Basil of Caesarea.” While ancient India, the Islamic world, Persia and others had their own hospitals—with the Islamic world specifically credited with systematizing the institution with departments, diseases, officer-in-charge, and specialists—it was the Christian notion of healing the sick which may have brought the institution to a wider population.
Hospitals were associated with various branches and sects of Christianity, all vying for power and prestige. The prestige of one’s sect depended on how well the narrative of medicinal power was projected and controlled. In keeping with the tradition of Christian dogma and persecution, those who professed disbelief were severely punished. Hospitals, cures, and associated medications all took on special mystique.
It is this history of medicine that is being played out now, in much the same manner, with people believing in the virtues of ventilators without a single critique (ventilators apparently have a low efficiency rate and can kill one-third of the elders after they are intubated, according to The New York Times). Plastic facemasks may or may not work, since the coronavirus can live for 72 hours on plastic. Even the whole idea of putting a large number of sick people together may be a failed experiment, since it is easy for those less sick to get more sick with more exposure to viral loads in a contaminated hospital environment, with people packed into a small space, breathing in huge amounts of viral spores through air-conditioners.
Ayurveda, India’s age-old traditional healing system, is promptly labeled as “fake” by this Eurocentric hegemonic model. BBC hastily put out an article to this effect, warning people that turmeric could not cure coronavirus. Prince Charles got caught up in the crosshairs, with an Ayurvedic Vaidya in Bangalore claiming, “Mr Charles is my patient.” The place put out a hasty rejoinder that Prince Charles had done nothing but take NHS advice. Turmeric, which may kill the virus faster than any known pharmaceutical in existence, has not been tested by a single scientist, despite there being evidence in plain sight with large parts of the “turmeric belt” of Asia and Africa relatively unscathed by the virus. Low contagion countries like India and many parts of Africa all cook their food in turmeric.
In addition, these countries also make low or no use of plastic food containers. Food is cooked daily, and nothing is stored for later. Despite hysteria about plastic being the one and only material that can shield people from the virus, it is pretty clear plastic is also much beloved by the virus as an elegant habitat. It survives for four hours on copper, but 72 hours on plastic.
All of this brings makes us question: Is Western medicine a giant boondoggle? The insistence that everyone must follow this model is not just ridiculous, but may also kill people since they will rush to the poorly resourced hospitals rather than stay home and minister to this with multiple herbs, concoctions and healing blends known by tradition. The beauty of Ayurveda is its decentralized model—everyone can be a healer in their own homes, with just basic kitchen cabinet ingredients as medicine.
Even Native Americans and African Americans in poor areas of the US will have to tap their own culinary and medicinal heritages, if they are to survive this pandemic without depending on what is essentially an unaffordable healthcare model.
Many Nepali workers have died in New York. They may have lived had they followed their gurus and amchis, rather than going to the hospitals which turned them away without treatment.
Governments of India, Nepal, and Bhutan must support a massive effort to produce Ayurvedic herbs which cure pulmonary and respiratory infections; and not only listen to WHO, UN or any other Eurocentric hegemonic authorities that will insist that traditional healing is “fake news” in order to sustain the illusion of European supremacy to the last breath.
It is clear as this pandemic unfolds that the savage in the heart of human culture may be modern civilization, not the painted tribes of the Amazons who always knew how to cure themselves with berries and roots. The irrational people are the ones who will not listen to evidence, who will continue to do their shamanistic dances in their plastic PPE, murmuring superstitious voodoo chants about non-existent vaccines.
