Okay, I know it’s been doom and gloom for the past few weeks about the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Grocery stores are madhouses. Toilet paper is nowhere to be found. Clorox wipes are gone. And now bars, restaurants and movie theaters are being closed down by executive decree in some states. In Las Vegas, the strip is shutting down. New Jersey is virtually on lockdown. In Virginia, there isn’t a statewide lockdown on bars, eating establishments and movie theaters, but there is a ban on gatherings of ten or more people and the police now have the authority to enforce that. The disease has infected over 5,000 Americans and killed at least 100. Now, the seasonal flu is set to infect 32-49 million and kill 18,000-50,000 this year, but we could approach those levels, even higher if we don’t listen to the measures that are being heavily suggested by the CDC and other health officials from the Trump administration concerning managing the spread.
It’s on young people to do their part and stop acting like idiots. Stop going to bars, risking exposure and then getting sick or worse getting the elderly and the immunocompromised sick. That latter group is the most at risk from dying from the Wuhan coronavirus. Just practice some social distancing for a few weeks and we can get a handle on this. Wash your hands, don’t touch your face, wipe down surfaces and practice standard common-sense hygiene, and you should be okay. What isn’t okay are these weirdo remedies emanating from India that include bathing in cow feces. No, I’m not kidding. Some people are bathing in cow crap to make themselves immune from the Wuhan coronavirus. Oh, and consuming cow urine, as well (via WSJ):
Swami Chakrapani Maharaj, president of the Hindu Mahasabha—a century-old organization that advocates Hindutva (or “Hinduness”)—declared that “consuming cow urine and cow dung will stop the effect of infectious coronavirus.” The swami added that a “person who chants ‘om namah shivay’ and applies cow dung” on his body “will be saved.” The Sanskrit chant is a salutation to Shiva, a Hindu deity.
The cow is revered by many Hindus, who abjure its meat and believe that its byproducts, especially urine, have health-giving qualities. The swami is a prominent figure in hard-line Hindu circles and has an ideological affinity with Mr. Modi. His pronouncement on the coronavirus is the latest in a list of questionable scientific assertions made by Hindu nationalists.
You don’t have to be a medical expert to know that this will do nothing to stop the virus. Nothing. But in a nation with over a billion people—India—this sort of nonsense is just as destructive as the liberal media’s pervasive anti-Trump hate they spew onto the airwaves on a daily basis: it does nothing to help mitigate the spread.
