Eating garlic, drinking lemon water, never having a dry throat? The myths of this pandemic – News

The “guide” prepared by EFE also includes a set of “recommendations that don’t work” in terms of prevention, from children’s urine to washing hands – which, instead of killing the virus, may contain small amounts of viral or bacterial material – the benefits of vitamin C, broadcast in videos that circulated on social networks, but which the WHO ensures does not prevent contagion.

At most, in large doses, vitamin C can help reduce the duration of a cold, he stresses.

Then comes hot water or tea with lemon and bicarbonate, an “almost divine sweet” with an alleged origin in Israel, but which, they assure, neither promotes the “alkalinization of the immune system” nor strengthens the defenses against the disease.

There is also garlic, whose antimicrobial properties are recognized, but without any proof that eating it protects against SARS-Cov-2.

Drinking a lot of water is another widespread piece of advice, allegedly by “some Japanese doctors” who recommend taking it every 15 minutes and that the throat “is never dry” to avoid contagion, but which has not been confirmed by the WHO.

In the “cures” section, the recommendation to take sodium chloride dissolved in water daily, broadcast in several videos, is compared to suggesting that you take bleach, according to the United States Food and Drug Administration, because it is a chemical used to bleach fabrics and paper in industry. “Not only is it not effective, it is illegal”, underlines the “guide”.

If some welcomed the claim that “coronavirus survival is impossible in wine” and that “moderate consumption can be beneficial”, in fact “there is no evidence that wine helps to fight” the disease, since the virus affects, not the digestive tract, but the lungs.

Also, cocaine, a stimulating and addictive drug, the consumption of which causes serious side effects and on people’s health, “does not work”, stresses the WHO.

The theses that defend the use of pneumococcal vaccines and against influenza or antibiotics, which are effective against bacteria, but not against viruses, are also contradicted.

The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 96,000 deaths and infected almost 1.6 million people in 193 countries and territories.

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