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Related article: As it races to treat patients infected with the new coronavirus, the Chinese government is seeing potential in a cocktail of antiviral drugs.

Related article: As it races to treat patients infected with the new coronavirus, the Chinese government is seeing potential in a cocktail of antiviral drugs. It is also recommending the Peaceful Palace Bovine Pill, a traditional Chinese medicine made with the gallstone of cattle, buffalo horn, jasmine and pearl. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/world/asia/coronavirus-traditional-chinese-medicine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/world/asia/coronavirus-tr...

dmix 7y ago
> The use of these ancient Chinese remedies dovetails with a push by Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, to harness them as a source of national pride. He has said that officials should place as much importance on traditional Chinese medicines as they do on Western medicines. This is actually scary to read, handing out placebos in the middle of an epidemic. China is going to continue being ground zero for these sorts of things (that and the developmentally-fringe parts of Africa). A couple of years ago (2013-2016) China had an H7N9 avian flu outbreak that infected 1,223 and had a 30-40% mortality rate (COVID-19 is around 2.1%), which didn't get much Western news coverage: >> It has been established that many of the human cases of H7N9 appear to have a link to live bird markets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H7N9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H7N9 Even the classic 1918 flu that killed 50 million originated in China: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanish-flu-1918-china-origins-pandemic-science-health/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanis...