In Pakistan, Home Remedies for Covid-19 are More Trusted than Doctors

This article is part of IranWire's ongoing coverage of Covid-19 disinformation in different countries, in partnership with Health Studio.

By Ramsha Jahangir for Health Studio

In Pakistan, discourse around coronavirus, Covid-19 and vaccination drives have been marred by public distrust and disinformation from the start. Below are five false theories circulating about Covid-19 in Pakistan, which are posing an active risk to public health more than 12 months into the pandemic.

1. Covid-19 Vaccines are Dangerous

Pakistan’s battle with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories long before the coronavirus pandemic, and has had a significant impact on public health. Vaccine hesitancy has led to Pakistan being one of the last countries in the world still struggling to eradicate polio.

In the past year, viral videos on YouTube and messages forwarded on WhatsApp have specifically claimed that the Covid-19 vaccine can lead to irreversible genetic changes. This is false, and based on a misunderstanding of how the new mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccine type used by Pfizer and others works.

Rob Swanda, a PhD student in biochemistry at the same university, has created a helpful explanatory video to demonstrate the impossibility of messenger RNA affecting a person’s DNA. The flow of genetic information travels from DNA to RNA, he explains, and not the other way around. DNA is located in the nucleus of the cell, and RNA does not travel there. Even if it could, the molecules are different and cannot interact.

Concerns also abound in Pakistan that any vaccine could have severe side effects. The results of clinical trials for the two vaccines in widest circulation at the moment, Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/AstraZenica have been published and detailed online by health providers such as the British National Health Service. While many patients do experience limited and temporary side effects such as fever and tiredness, severe side effects have not been observed.

2. Sanna Makki, a Herbal Remedy, Can Cure Covid-19

In Pakistan, desi totkas (home remedies) often seem to be in higher demand than doctors. Viral WhatsApp messages circulating in the country recommend garlic water and vitamin C supplements as cures for Covid-19. Sanna Makki is among the most-touted remedies.

A man wearing a mask behind a shop’s sanitary precautions sign in Karachi.

Sanna Makki is a herb, alternatively known as sennoside or senna glycoside, which is typically used as a laxative. According to Dr Faheem Younus, chief of infectious diseases at the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health hub, the benefits of the dried leaves are uncertain, but taken in excess they can cause abdominal cramps, diarrhoea, pain, nausea, and electrolyte imbalance. “We sometimes use it for colonoscopy prep,” he wrote in a Twitter thread about the efficacy of different herbal Covid-19 “cures”.

There have been no large-scale clinical trials examining the efficacy of Sanna Makki as a cure for Covid-19. One might assume that given the potential financial rewards that pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines can reap, and the prestige afforded to governments that deliver their populations from the pandemic, both would have been quick to jump on a common and effective treatment were it backed by science.

3. Covid-19 is Bill Gates’s Plan to Launch the "New World Order"

Several videos produced by right-wing YouTube channels in Pakistan claim that the pandemic is a plan by Bill Gates to reset the world order. Some anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists believe that Gates, even after investing billions of dollars in healthcare around the world, is somehow leading efforts to depopulate the world.

These groups have doctored his past public statements and presented them as “evidence” that the world’s wealthy planned the pandemic. One such video has been viewed more than 216,000 times on YouTube. This was a digital manipulation of Bill Gates’ speech at a TED conference in 2015, in which he pointed out that the world had not done enough to stop Ebola and spoke generally about the danger of new pandemics.

Reuters has explained in detail that Gates is not responsible for the pandemic. Not only are scientists in agreement that SARS-CoV-2 is a biological phenomenon that emerged in animals and then spread to humans, but Gates’ remarks have been misinterpreted on several other occasions, including after another TED talk in 2010 in which he pointed out that immunization would lead to people having fewer children – but would not halt population growth or reduce the world’s population. “There is no evidence that the pandemic was deliberately planned or that Bill Gates has any links with such a plan,” the report concludes.

One might wonder why, were the conspiracy real, its architect would have announced his nefarious plans five and 10 years in advance to in public.

4. Coronavirus is a Biological Attack by the US

Ever since February 2020, when Pakistan reported its first cases of Covid-19, social media has been awash with speculation about the origins of the virus. One of the most popular conspiracy theories claims that the US military “created” the novel coronavirus and planted it in Wuhan city in Hubei province, China in October 2019.

A man wears a protective mask as he rides a bicycle loaded with supplies during the coronavirus outbreak in Karachi. 

There is currently no evidence to suggest that the virus originated anywhere other than in nature. The theory has been debunked by fact-checkers at PolitFact, amongst many others, who point out that according to the very scientists isolated the genetic makeup of SARS-CoV-2, there is no evidence that the virus was man-made or “engineered”. The World Health Organisation itself has also refuted the claim.

5. There are No Covid-19 Cases in Pakistan

Almost a year into the pandemic, but some politicians in Pakistan are still in denial. In a public address as recently as November 2020, an ex-senator, Faisal Raza Abidi, claimed that there were no Covid-19 cases in Pakistan despite the government having officially reported more than 300,000 cases of Covid-19 within its borders.

The politician went on to claim that coronavirus only spreads through food and not through person-to-person transmission. “I challenge you to lock me up with a Covid-19 patient in a room for 24 hours,” he said. “I bet I wouldn’t contract it. There’s no need for face masks.” This risible “advice” contravened the guidelines issued by Pakistan’s own Ministry of National Health Services Regulations and Coordination, which requires people to wear face masks in public, as well as health policy regarding coronavirus in every developed nation on earth.