Mum told me a rather interesting/disturbing story yesterday that I thinl illustrates the bad (and perhaps good) of Whatsapp forwards. Circumstantial but interesting nonetheless
My mum forwards on every forward she gets to us for ‘verification’. Tiring but I’d rather she does than doesn’t. Like a month or more ago, she sent one about ginger and pineapple peel or whatever else as an anti-covid concoction. Was quite viral at the time
Anyway a few days ago, she sent another one and this time she wasn’t asking for verification. It came with the rider that we must all listen to it (was a voicenote) because the person who forwarded it to her never slams her. She kept harassing us to listen to it
So yesterday I took her out for a drive and she brought it up again. So I just decided to play it on the car speaker. This time it was by a Caribbean sounding lady who said she was in Maryland (US) and was a doctor
Anyway the gist of the voicenote was that those concoctions work like antibiotics and go after *all* bacteria in your system. So you should take them sparingly BUT along with things like probiotic yoghurt to replace the *good* bacteria lost in the concoction machine gun fire
The lady sounded reasonable and what she said intuitively made sense. She also stressed that you should take the concoction, if you have to, no more than 2ce a week and you mustn’t give it to children
Anyway, eventually the reason why my mum had been pushing this particular voicenote emerged. It turned out that in one of her church Whatsapp groups, one lady had been pushing the earlier ginger concoction quite hard and had been the one who first sent it to her
Week before last, that lady’s husband was taken to hospital on Thursday. Tested positive for covid. And he was dead before 2pm on Sunday. His organs were apparently just shutting down
My mum’s conclusion was that given how actively his wife had been pushing the ginger concoction, it was quite possible that they had actively used it perhaps when the man first started feeling some symptoms and ultimately leaving him immunocompromised
As I said - all circumstantial and not to in any way suggest that they somehow brought it on themselves (the man and his wife are quite lovely people). But in these confusing times, so many people need clarity and in the process hold on to what’s familiar for comfort
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