I have come across numerous arguments and discussions across social media platforms since the beginning of Covid-19 pandemic that it’s not a new disease and they may be finally right. For your better undrstanding I will try to elaborate it and make it simple.
If you take the example of cancer, TB, HIV and even common cold or fever there are specific medicines to treat these diseases but in case of corona there is no specific medicine and it’s only being treated with the medicines already available in the market.
The practice of doctors advising paracetamol for fever didn’t go down well with many people. They argued that if the infection is so dangerous then why people are getting alright by it. A few of them even went to the extent of saying that the Prime Minister has joined hands with the pharmaceutical companies to spread panic and fear among the people so that they will end up buying medicines which in turn will generate huge profits which would be used by BJP for elections.
When the second wave came many of these conspiracy theorists got infected by the virus and their theories become the opposite of what they were advocating.
There are various preconditions for a person to get infected with any diseases, a person doesn’t develops lungs cancer in a day or a year it takes him years of smoking to reach a stage where he gets cancer Infected. Whereas in case of Covid-19 it enters into our body from mouth and nose, ironically these are the most important places in a human’s life as one is used for taking food and drinks and the other is used for inhaling oxygen.
This virus has chosen the easiest and best possible way to enter the human body as it’s very easy to let our guard down by not following the protocols as advised by the WHO and Ministry of Health, Government of India.
The Covid-19 virus has mutated at a lightening speed today. There are so many variants and they have evolved to evade our immune pretty well (When a virus replicates or makes copies of itself, it sometimes changes a little bit, which is normal for a virus. These changes are called “mutations”. A virus with one or more new mutations is referred to as a “variant” of the original virus). A household daily use soap is more than good enough to kill the virus from your hand but at the same time it becomes difficult to kill once it enters your body.
Our ancient Ayurveda coupled with Yoga had advised many things but what interested me the most was two preventional or remedial measures for infections in nose and throat 3,000 years ago:
As I have mentioned Ayurveda some of you may wonder about the fuss going on about the use of cow dung and urine as preventional remedies for fighting Covid-19 but if the people recommending it believe so then they should start living in a dairy farm. As a kid when I used to visit my maternal grandmother’s home during my summer vacations, I used to see people applying cow dung to the floors and walls of their mud houses.
I questioned these people why are they doing it as it is extremely unhygienic but they told me that it keeps insects away. I met 2-3 of them in January 2021 still living in the same mud houses.
I asked them jokingly if they are still using cow dung and they said no. Upon asking them why, they told me that as farmers have started using fertilizers and insecticides for growing crops the natural herbs and flowers which used to grow post harvesting have disappeared and so does the its effectiveness. Hats off to these people’s understanding! I don’t know who taught them or how they learned.
My personal conclusion is that Covid-19 is stealthy. It can adopt, camouflage and deceive which it has already done. Let it be war or politics we always try to figure out our adversaries actions. It is not a new disease. It only attacks your weakest part of your immune system. It has the capability to do the unthinkable.