I have just witnessed the most wonderful "WhatsApp forwarded claim” on my friend’s phone this morning -- A lady was sharing her experience of her ordeal with Covid-19. According to her, taking sweet potato soup with lots of ginger, with high dose vitamin C, cured her of Covid. And she is sharing this to save all others from Covid-19.
I totally get her intentions. She's just a kind hearted individual who feels lucky enough to survive, and feels that she needs to get the message out to help out her fellow humans. And I don't doubt her testimony. She really did take sweet potato soup and recovered from Covid.
The problem is, the information she shared isn’t true. She recovered, but it is not because of sweet potato soup.
This isn't something new. Many forwarded videos feature even doctor’s testimonies swearing that garlic, zinc, (even warm water) and other traditional herbs helped their patients recover.
What they clearly missed is, out of the 1.2 million people in Malaysia who contracted COVID-19, ONE MILLION PEOPLE have recovered. And I'm pretty sure the MAJORITY of these people did not use sweet potato soup to cure themselves.
Furthermore, there is a very high possibility that out of the 10,000 who DIED, there are many of them who took vitamin C, zinc and even warm water. None of these treatments saved them from their fates.
The very simple reason behind this is, MOST of the people who get COVID do recover eventually. And whatever they take can be falsely identified as a "successful treatment”. You could literally make something up right now (like lemon juice, asam laksa etc), and there will be some amongst the 1 million cured patients that will swear they took it too, and they were cured.
This is the reason why we need proper research to be done on any potential cures, before we spread the news that it works.
A good cure/treatment will need to show with sufficient numbers and clear circumstances that it is beyond a doubt the true reason why that patient recovered. And proving this is no easy task. Many researchers need to put in a lot of time and resources to get an answer if something really works. You may be surprised, but every single approved medicine goes through this process. Which is why it takes a long time to get 1 drug to be approved in Malaysia.
I understand that everyone is hoping for a miracle cure to end this pandemic (myself included), but the best thing we can do in this day and time, is to put our trust in the world’s foremost scientists, and follow their recommendations (WHO, CDC, KKM). These recommendations will evolve over time, as new information is being uncovered almost on a daily basis.
But for the time being, it isn’t that hard to follow:
Get Vaccinated
Comply to SOP
And await further updates from the authorities.