THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Wednesday, April 8, 2020 |A
THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
cow excrement, which Hindus
consider sacred. “We all know
cow dung is very helpful,” said
Suman Haripriya, a legislator
in the northeastern Indian
state of Assam, according to
the Press Trust of India.
Chinese President Xi Jinping,
meanwhile, has touted herbal
medicines like lianhua qingwen,
used to treat the flu. Officials
also promote such remedies at
the local level, where doctors on
the front line face performance
reviews factoring in their use of
traditional remedies.
Western doctors are skepti-
cal of the claims of traditional
medicines and have warned
against purported cures. But
the rush for treatments has
put some government leaders
at odds with medical profes-
sionals, and not only in the de-
veloping world.
President Trump has faced
criticism from health groups
for promoting antimalaria
medications like chloroquine
and hydroxychloroquine as aing with the World Health Or-
ganization and has ramped up
efforts to remove posts with
disinformation on Covid-19. In
a recent blog post, the com-
pany said it had widened its
definition of harmful content
to prohibit posts that run
counter to public-health guide-
lines, deny the outbreak or
propose either harmful or in-
effective treatments.
On its website, the WHO
has compiled a list of myth-
busting guidelines to stop the
dissemination of unreliable
treatments, including some
calling for people to spray
their body with alcohol, nasal
saline washes or to take a hot
bath to kill the virus with heat.
Few world leaders find
themselves in a more precari-
ous position than Mr. Maduro
in Venezuela, where the public
health-care system has col-
lapsed. Infectious-disease ex-
perts say the country is an in-
cubator for diphtheria, measles,
dengue and other contagions.And because large numbers
of Venezuelans have little ac-
cess to information beyond
state propaganda, Mr. Ma-
duro’s health advice may be
the only counsel many will get.
The leftist leader and his
aides have said the U.S. cre-
ated the virus to harm China,
which ranks among his top al-
lies. On a recent night, Mr. Ma-
duro read some anticoronavi-
rus advice he said he received
from a doctor: a tea made of
elderberry, black pepper,
lemon rinds, ginger and honey.
While Mr. Maduro’s subse-
quent posts promoting the
recipe were taken down from
Twitter, they remain accessible
on Venezuelan state media and
pro-regime news sites.
“That virus has a remedy,”
Mr. Maduro said, calling the
concoction a natural antibi-
otic. “It’s easy. But the multi-
national pharmaceutical com-
panies will say it doesn’t
work. It’s a remedy that our
ancestors lived on.”Venezuelan President Nico-
lás Maduro said he was tapping
into ancestral wisdom when he
shared on his official Twitter
account the recipe for a ginger-
lemon tea with purported anti-
coronavirus benefits.
The strongman then fumed
after the social-media giant
removed his post as part of its
effort to censor content with
false or misleading informa-
tion on the global pandemic.
“My God, it’s a thing of mad-
ness,” Mr. Maduro responded
on state television. “Who’s the
imbecile, the stupid one who
made the decision to block a
natural Venezuelan recipe?”
From animal urine to boiled
garlic to shots of vinegar, ev-
eryone from government offi-
cials to shamans to swindlers
around the world are touting a
host of unproven household
remedies as people desper-
ately seek a cure for Covid-19,
the respiratory disease caused
by the new coronavirus.
For now, there are no vac-
cines. But as drug firms re-
search treatments that could
take more than a year to de-
velop, global health policy mak-
ers and social-media companies
are immersed in a parallel bat-
tle against phony antidotes.
“It’s a problem when they’re
sharing a false perception that
people are protected when they
are not,” said Jarbas Barbosa,
assistant director of the Pan-
American Health Organization.
“Some of these recommenda-
tions are in good faith. But then
there are also people trying to
get some profit from this.”
In Nigeria, authorities have
tried to quash rumors that a
spicy pepper soup will eliminate
the virus and that facial beards
help transmit it. For his part,
Belarus’s strongman leader, Al-
exander Lukashenko, said that
vodka and a sauna should do
the job. In southern Brazil, po-
lice said they were investigating
an Evangelical church after it
promised coronavirus immunity
for the faithful.
In India, Hindu nationalist
politicians highlighted the per-
ceived purifying qualities ofBYKEJALVYASDesperation Feeds False Cure Claims
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in white, touched elbows with Russian Ambassador Sergey Melik-Bagdasarov, in Caracas on March 30.MIRAFLORES PALACE/REUTERSNEW DELHI—India is ending
a ban on the export of hydroxy-
chloroquine, an antimalarial
drug that may help treat victims
of the new coronavirus. The
South Asian nation’s decision
comes days after President
Trump urged India to release
supplies of the medicine, as it is
one of its biggest producers.
India is one of the world’s
largest producers of all kinds
of generic medicines and had
restricted exports of several
drugs in March to ensure it
had enough on hand to fight
coronavirus at home.
On Tuesday, India said it is
now willing to start exporting
hydroxychloroquine again but
with some government restric-
tions. It will export to neigh-
boring countries that have few
alternatives to Indian supplies
as well as to countries and re-
gions where the coronavirus
outbreaks are the worst, for-
eign-ministry spokesman
Anurag Srivastava said.
“We will also be supplying
these essential drugs to some
nations who have been partic-
ularly badly affected by the
pandemic,” he said.
Mr. Trump and Indian
Prime Minister Narendra Modi
spoke over the weekend to
discuss how the U.S. and India
could help each other fight the
pandemic.
Some people, including Mr.
Trump, have been hopeful that
a combination of the antima-
larial drug hydroxychloroquine
and azithromycin, an antibac-
terial drug, could lessen the
worst effects of the virus.
A small number of early
studies using only a limited
number of patients in France
and China have suggested the
drugs may help relieve symp-
toms. However some health of-
ficials and doctors warned the
studies were too small to prove
the drugs are safe and effective.
BYRAJESHROY
India Lifts
Export Ban
On Drug
Many Seek
solution despite their still-un-
determined efficacy in treating
Covid-19. The hype led to a
rush on the drug and short-
ages in some countries, a con-
cern for patients who use
them to treat ailments like lu-
pus and rheumatoid arthritis,
said Myron Cohen, an immu-nology and epidemiology ex-
pert at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“It’s not surprising that
there is a desperate search for
medication,” Dr. Cohen said.
“But unexpectedly, some things
can prove not to be safe and
can make the illness worse.”
Twitter says it is coordinat-Some government
leaders have clashed
with medical
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