Coronavirus: NCDC mocks Gov. Makinde, others claiming banana oil cures viral disease

A governor and a medical director have gone out to declare how prayers and immune-boosting herbs nuked out coronavirus four days after they tested positive.

Don’t you swallow that—at least as far as flesh and blood go.

“We should remember that 90 per cent of these patients recover without any intervention,” NDCD boss Chikwe Ihekweazu said.

“So if you take something and say you recovered and that something is why you recovered, it doesn’t quite add up.”

He was responding to journalists asking him to give an insight on the two cases that turned negative less than four days after infection thanks to the snakeoil they got while they were quarantined.

Oyo Governor Seyi Makinde caught the bug on March 30. Then he bounced out of isolation April 6—with a story.

He said a very good friend and brother of his, Dr Muyideen Olatunji, who head the state’s primary healthcare, gave him an immune-boosting potion—blackseed oil.

“So I mixed it with honey and took one teaspoon in the morning and one in the evening,”Makinde said on a radio programme after recovery.

“So, there are local solutions to boost immunity. Our people should not fret. Just as I have been able to get the virus out of my system, so will it be for majority of our people.”

Boogie-woogieing on testing negative, the University Teaching Hospital Chief Medical Director Prof Jesse Otegbayo would credit his own recovery to his faith in God. Plus, the covid-19 viral load in his blood was not significant.

“It made the news on Sunday, the 29th of March, 2020, that I tested positive for Covid-19, with details of the result indicating that I had low viral load and high CT (immunity index),” he said after he recovered April 6.

To let Nigerians into the secret of his recovery, Otegbayo, by way of biohacks in a series of tweets, asked Nigerians to boost their immunity by paying “attention to our personal hygiene, eat healthy, take measures that will boost our immune system and get good rest.”

He too was big on eating to bump up immunity, as though it were what anyone can do by grazing on esoteric herbs, and sipping some holy grail in four days.

Medical experts agree body immune is a complex system that you build with your lifestyle over the years. It’s not a body clock you can dial up and down at will.

According to Diet Doctors, the immune system is not “one thing” that we can easily measure.

“It’s an intricate and delicate system with many different components. Helping one section might impair another, or boosting a certain section may have nothing to do with fighting viruses,” the web portal states.

No matter what supplements or herbs anybody eats or drink, there are risk factors that determine how strong immunity will be. Smoking, overweight, diabetes, hypertension, and other underlying heath conditions weaken capacity to defend the body against viral infections—diseases that hardly have a cure.

Spoiler alert: all the roots and shoots Makinde and Otagbeyi list in their witch’s brew—garlic, turmeric, ginger, blackseed, cloves, others—need more research works to be scientifically proven as immune boosters.

The best Covid-19 hack is to lather up your hands in running water every now and then. That’s the NCDC tip.

Let’s take it for granted you are already a social distancer.