COVID-19 AND INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

Novel Conceptual Framework for COVID-19 Responses

BY BIKO AGOZINO

 

As in the Great Plague of 1665-1666, the cure for COVID-19 may not be a magic bullet in the form of a vaccine, herbs or pills because no vaccine is 100% effective and there may be chances of breakthrough infections and the need for booster shots with no end in sight as the virus mutates. 

The search for effective interventions must look beyond vaccines and also consider original methods in the form of indigenous knowledge systems such as fasting that the government declared nationally in England with the belief that the plague was punishment for sin. Science has since proven that fasting is an effective response to viral infections. A national or global day of fasting will cost nothing and is accessible to all. It may just be the simple but effective novel conceptual framework that would prepare the world to prevent similar pandemics in the future at no additional cost. 

Our approaches respond to the challenges facing older people as a result of the pandemic by presenting disruptive ways of thinking about the problems that have evaded solutions, proposing new and paradigm-shifting scientific hypotheses that are testable by all in ways that are undervalued by the scientific community.

 

I read the co-authored paper on the role of Chinese Medicine in the fight against the Corona Virus. I am very impressed by the different institutional affiliations of the authors to show how the Peoples Republic of China takes seriously scientific approaches to indigenous knowledge systems in health. However, like all traditional medicine systems and exactly like pharmacological medicine, treatment tends to suffer from ingestion and injection biases. What if the Chinese experimented with a national day of fasting to help them halt the spread of the disease dramatically? There is evidence that intermittent fasting is widely practiced in TCM. The application of indigenous knowledge systems may be part of the reasons why Africa has defied the predictions of most experts by surviving better than many richer economies so far.

 

The indigenous knowledge system hypothesis in my linked paper here could help the world to prevent and treat the epidemic very quickly. My African hypothesis offers the original and innovative abstention intervention through a 24 hours water only fasting to weaken the virus and strengthen the immune system and produce dramatic recovery.

 

A 90-year old great grandmother, Geneva Wood, in the state of Washington reported that when she was sick with COVID-19, she could not eat for three days, "I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to do anything,” Wood said. One of the major symptoms of Covid is loss of appetite, a bio-feedback asking us to undergo intermittent fasting with water only.

 

That is probably why she survived while her co-nursing home residents perished by the dozens. The symptoms in many patients include loss of taste and appetite, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, headache, fever, and dry cough - all of which suggest that periodic fasting can help at no cost and even at negative cost of savings on food.

 

I am happy to provide other related hypotheses like desistance from blowing the nose and instead sniffing it in and spitting out to reduce hand contamination and the bruising of the nose that could attract more infections. 

The benefit of ventilating the homes and hospitals cannot be overemphasized because the air inside tends to be two times more polluted than the air outside. 

The controlled experimental design is proposed by having 100 patients with COVID-19 symptoms try the 24 hours fasting with water while another control group continues with conventional treatment to be compared after one week. If X, then Y and if the differences are significant, the intervention will be extended to all patients worldwide and even to healthy populations to promote herd immunity the way indigenous communities must have done to survive past pandemics. 

Of course, you do not need a controlled experiment to tell you that you should open your windows and let fresh air into your buildings daily, not to pick your nose, and to go off food once in a while and drink lots of water. Care Homes, schools and offices with windows that cannot be opened should experiment with all doors pegged open to allow more fresh air from outside and to prevent the need for hundreds of unwashed hands to share the same door knobs daily. Open Doors Policies may help! When you try some or all of the above non-medical recommendations, be observant and record how you feel in a wellness diary. Then compare with before.