There is an antidote for gastrointestinal issues called “eating sh*t”.

Modern antibiotics are taken through the mouth into the human body to kill the enemies powerfully, but doctors often find that antibiotics can cause side effects of gastrointestinal discomfort. It is because antibiotics kill both the good bacteria and bad bacteria in the intestines in a style that is comparable to meteorites hitting the earth, causing the gastrointestinal ecology to have to readjust itself. It is said that the solid parts of human feces are in fact made up of all kinds of bacteria. Indigestion happens when good bacteria are killed. The minute they retreat from the field, the “habitat” or “food” made available within the intestines allow for many powerful and evil bacterial to reproduce freely. The ecological imbalance is what causes many gastrointestinal problems such as diarrhea.

So what to do about it? Some doctors came up with the most genius plan of the century – to get patients to eat “sh*t”. Of course, don’t try this at home. Doctors will seek from healthy patient sh*t that contain a combination of healthy bacteria in a natural proportion, put them into nice capsules, then they become good medicine. When patients swallow these pills into their stomachs and their intestines, a new, balanced bacterial ecology is formed.

I was reminded of this story of eating sh*t when I watched the press conference with medical experts explaining how various vaccines could cope with various variants of the virus.

The emergence of the vaccine will prevent the original virus from replicating itself. There is a similarity between the laws of life and human society: competitors for resources are often your very own species that are closest to you, because what you need for survival are similar. After the original virus strains are contained, the mutant variants have fewer competitors, and that is when they become aggressive.

Therefore, the next important data in the vaccine race is not only about the “efficiency” of the vaccines, but also whether they can handle the current trends of prevalence of variant virus strains in Britain, Brazil, and South Africa.

The latest report compiled by the Hong Kong SAR medical experts is a political bomb.

The latest research shows that the German Pfizer and British AstraZeneca vaccines can effectively handle the British and Brazilian variants; the South African variant is a little more problematic. Pfizer works, but AstraZeneca does not. As for the China-made SinoVac, nothing can be said about its efficacy, because there has not been sufficient data for reference!

What exactly is “insufficient data”? Chinese and foreign pharmaceutical companies are used to the common practice of rushing to publish the favorable results from preliminary stages of research so as to snatch the spotlight; if preliminary results are unfavorable, the tests are repeated, repeated, and repeated again. These processes are of course not to be published. SinoVac barely scraped a pass in tackling the original virus. If one hopes for it to have the ability to fight the variants, there has to be a miracle.

The effectiveness of the SinoVac vaccine will be a major concern in the SAR’s epidemic prevention strategy. If SinoVac is ineffective against any variants, while Pfizer is able to handle all three variants, why is the Hong Kong SAR government appealing to the public to take the SinoVac vaccine? The only advantage SinoVac has over the others is the fewer side effects that it can cause. Yet the more people take SinoVac, the more dragged on it will be for people to reach herd immunity. This is a price to be paid by society.

Another bizarre thing regarding the China-made vaccine is the announcement made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China. To benefit from the easier entry at the border for foreigners, and for certain quarantine restrictions to be relaxed, one of the conditions is to have “taken China-made vaccines”. Whether a vaccine is to be trusted has nothing to do with the “made in where”, but ought to be about science and effectiveness. Even for the fight against viruses, there has to be patriotism being thrown into the mix, and the talk of national feelings and dignity. What a violation of common sense that can kill!

(Allan Au Ka-lun, veteran journalist)

Click here for Chinese version

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