China has abandoned its "COVID-zero" campaign, and with the loosening of social restrictions, the country has shifted its focus from preventing COVID-19 infections to managing them. As part of that program, Li Guangxi, with China’s State Council Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism, gave an interview last month encouraging people to take Chinese medicine for severe COVID-19, specifically ginger and Chinese ginseng, “the best ginseng in the world.”
Are ginger and Chinese ginseng effective in fighting COVID-19? Who knows? There must be some studies out there somewhere. But that brief interview touting unproven medicines was startling. Think about what may have happened if an American scientist or official had given the same advice publicly. Hearing those recommendations, our medical influencers might have gone nuclear. A high public official in totalitarian China basically said things that conceivably could get a U.S. speaker censored or canceled by the American scientific establishment.
That’s not such a stretch considering the case of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya, a tenured Stanford University professor, was one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a proposal to protect high-risk populations rather than impose strict lockdowns during COVID-19. One of its points was keeping schools open during the pandemic.
