We have seen a flood of stories advocating pseudoscientific interventions and practices to help prevent coronavirus. There are suggestions, for example that hot air blown up the nose kills the virus; that eating garlic can prevent viruses; and that pneumonia or malaria vaccination can protect against the virus.
Dear Salman,
your question raises an important problem. As you rightly said, those are pseudo-scientific methods, and in Science there is no pseudo; it would be an unrealistic shade of grey. With this in mind, we are forced to face reality: a Covid-19 vaccine is needed. But let's examine methods you listed:
- hot air blowing cannot eliminate any virus, mainly because the infection focus is not there, but at a pulmonar/bronchial level; moreover, thermolabile microorganisms require very high temperatures in order to be eliminated, and even a theory about such procedure would be preposterous.
- garlic contains some organosulfur compounds (e.g. allicin, ajoene and diallyl sulfides) that are known for their antibacterial effect. Since Covid-19 is a virus, we cannot kill it using an antibiotic, because we need an antiviral.
- pneumonia can be caused by both bacteria and viruses; such a vaccine cannot be used to prevent Covid-19, because the surface proteins used as an immunization target are different. Plus, as said before, products against bacteria do not mix with those employed against viruses.
- malaria is generally caused by a protozoan called Plasmodium falciparum that, regarding surface proteins, shares nothing with both bacteria and viruses.
Your question can help the scientific community to fight the dangerous fideistic approach that threaten to cause millions of avoidable deaths.
Good luck with your work and thank you for such a useful question.
Best,
Dave
Short answer No, they are not helpful.
My long answer however;
Though many/most people will understand a section of these pseudoscientific options are fake or impossible there will be ones that are sprinkled with just enough jargon or real science twisted to fit their narrative to fool the majority of people or are founded on bad or improper science such as the initial french paper for hydroxychloroquine.
The biggest problem with this is it takes emphasis away on the real potential treatments or preventative strategies or the pseudoscientific opinions actively harm current strategies such as the the anti mask wearing issues we are beginning to see.
There is very much a level of comfort in having something to do to treat something like this, the false comfort of the placebo and it explains the popularity in pseudoscientific areas such as homeopathy or holistic medicine but it can damage legitimate responses to real and present issues. Personally I think letting things like this slide as they are 'harmless' is a poor response and letting these small things go just lends credence to the bigger pseudoscientific issues we face.
Yes! I firmly believe some pseudo-scientific measures could be of help, like the hot air or better still steam inhalation. It is a technique that had long since been proven to facilitate nasal decongestion and the heat slow or even stall viral infectivity. It is employed frequently in cases of common cold.
Hi. I think the following website could help you:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01266-z
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Microbiology
- Virology
- Virus