Bad Medicine: Misinformation as a Common Remedy During a Pandemic

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What is it about public health emergencies that draw out the quacks to offer us tidbits of misinformation? If you have yet to catch wind of some of the untested (and frankly, dangerous!) remedies for COVID-19 that have been touted by non-medical professionals, then you have missed hare-brained notions such as drinking bleach to prevent infection, drinking water every fifteen minutes to “keep your mouth moist,” which supposedly prevents infection, drinking colloidal silver to kill the infection, and even taking cocaine.

None of these “treatments” will prevent you from contracting COVID-19 nor are they a cure. In fact, you are potentially doing more harm to your health by following them. To be sure, to protect Americans, infamous televangelist Jim Bakker has been sued by the State of Missouri and warned by the US Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission for selling colloidal silver, which the FDA notes is not an actual treatment for COVID-19.  

But all of this “fake news” about COVID-19 is nothing new. This is not the first time a pandemic has changed life for millions around the World. And not the first time unscrupulous charlatans promoted outlandish remedies during a public health emergency. Just over 100 years ago, the World was in the grips of a deadly influenza pandemic. By the time the multiple waves of the virus circled the globe, about one quarter of the world’s population had contracted the flu and tens of millions had died as a result. Just as today, public health experts offered sound and responsible advice for staying safe—advice that will be remarkably familiar to anyone today. From the Oxford Leader, out of Oakland County, Michigan, you could “fool the flu” by:

  • Not going to work while sick

  • Not spitting in public

  • Not visiting those who are sick

  • Not going to indoor meetings

  • Avoiding crowds

  • Not panicking

  • Covering your face when you cough and sneeze

  • Getting plenty of rest

  • Washing your hands and face often

  • Calling a physician at the first sign of sickness

But that sensible advice wasn’t the only information circulating. Other less-reliable remedies were being printed in newspapers and spread by word of mouth. Advertisements for Laxative Bromo Quinine could be found touting the anti-cold and flu properties of the medicine. Camphor was another treatment that was suggested as a cure for the flu—it was even said to be effective when a piece of camphor was mixed with the tobacco in a cigarette or a pipe!

Eating onions was also put forward as a treatment for the flu. Raw onions were said to be better than cooked onions. But syrup from onions was thought to be beneficial, too. And it seems that people didn’t even need to eat the onions for the benefits—a mother in wrapped her daughter head-to-toe in onions to keep her healthy. Maybe the joke printed in the El Paso Herald was actually the most true benefit of the onion treatment:

“Eat onions. No germ likes onions and, besides, if you eat onions people will keep away from you, and that is important in checking the influenza epidemic.”

100+ years later, we can easily dismiss eating onions or crumbling some camphor into a tobacco pipe as “snake oil.”  But, now that we are in a similarly extraordinary and uncertain time, we see how an off-the-wall idea might be appealing if there is any hope that it might keep us safe. In such times, the best ways to stay safe are to follow the advice of the most trusted experts—experts who don’t peddle in fake news, but provide information based on the best research and data available. Check with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the State of Michigan’s coronoavirus-specific webpage for more information about protecting yourself and others from COVID-19.

Historic information about remedies during the 1918 influenza pandemic drawn from Catharine Arnold’s “Eat More Onions,” found in Lapham’s Quarterly, September 13, 2018.