How Baba Ramdev claimed to have discovered a cure for coronavirus?

The curious case of a saffron clad baba with deep connections to the top echelons of power in the current dispensation, claiming to have found a hundred percent cure for Coronavirus. He calls it "Coronil".

Baba Ramdev and his Swadeshi FMCG company Patanjali made a startling claim to have found the cure for Coronavirus. The claim was widely broadcasted by several media partners. Soon Ministry of AYUSH, Government of India swung into action and asked Baba for proof of his claims. In response Patanjali sent an eleven-page reply to the ministry. Ramdev earlier claimed that the medicine is going to cure the coronavirus a hundred percent, in the span of just seven days. The good part being, government stopped the advertisement and put a gag order on media promoting it. Government said the medicine hasn't been scientifically proven to be effective and have asked the company for all necessary information related to Coronil along with the license procured for the same. The information sought include details like material used, places where research was conducted, hospitals and protocol sample size, institutional ethics committee clearance, clinical trial registration and results of the clinical trial etc. In reply Ramdev said that critical cases were not a part of the trial and critical case trials shall commence in next stages while claiming to have negatively tested seventy odd mild cases during their trials in Meerut.

The interesting observation is, in this trial only six subjects were found to be positive rest all were negative and those six positive cases were admitted into local hospital and treated for Coronavirus, so the claim by Ramdev does not hold. The other interesting observation is that most of the non-critical cases anyways recover for the virus and none of the critical cases have been a part of the trial as confessed by Ramdev. So, in other words he is claiming that his medicine is curing people who are anyways going to recover. Ayurvedic drugs license authority of Uttarakhand has raised serious question marks on this medication. The sub-director of the authority has claimed that Ramdev was not given license for coronavirus medicine but for an immunity booster and cough-cold medicine. The official got to know about Ramdev's claims through media. The authority has sent notice to Ramdev seeking answers.

In this rather bizarre unfolding of events, the bigger question remains unanswered. How could a company start advertising a medicine without undertaking all the efforts to make it? and then without undergoing all the stages to test it? How could the media agencies without checking any claims start advertising the same on their platform? Showing how TV news in India fell from grace. Is there a bigger strategy at play here? If this is a plan to distract people from some other important and grave issue? All these questions still need to be answered. In any other functional democracy with strong institutional framework, both Patanjali and the media houses would have been taken to task and would have had their licenses revoked.

Coronavirus is a global health crisis and has not only disrupted the whole world but also taken so many lives. In such a grave and serious situation, a shady company without any approvals, trials or license launches a medicine claiming to cure this virus and the Indian media broadcasts that propaganda live. This calls for a serious introspection for where we are heading as a logic and reason-based society, not to mention where we have slipped on the scale of democracy. Human lives don't seem to matter anymore till the time crony capitalists make money and keeps donating to political parties. This episode is certainly going to hurt India's image on the world stage as a scientific community-based country and would rather put us into the category of quacks.

Baba Ramdev is not new to controversy. He has been in news mostly because of his political commentary in favour of the current dispensation and the lack of oversight that he and his swadeshi ayurvedic company enjoy in lieu of promoting nationalism, calling for boycott made in China products and rising economic patriotism, which invariably suits the nationalist agenda of the right-wing party in power. He calls himself the harbinger of change and claims to bring social change through the promotion of domestic Ayurveda based food business. He is also known for making loose comments in the past about petrol and Diesel becoming super cheap if Mr. Modi came to power and our currency touching new highs in case we voted for BJP, not to mention looking into hindsight it was all nothing more than wishful thinking. His domestic food business continues to be mired in controversy. From the quality to compliance, he seems to dodge all the necessary food regulator's requirements due to his political connections. In power circles he is known as a VVVIP.

Conclusion:

Baba Ramdev claimed to have discovered the cure for Coronavirus and his company Patanjali has come up with the medicine called 'Coronil' which he advertised on several media platforms as a hundred percent cure for COVID-19 in seven days flat. It should not come as a surprise to anybody since this case circles around Baba Ramdev and his dodgy Ayurveda based company Patanjali. If anybody could have attempted this sort of bulldozing of regulatory practices that could only be him. Not only did he undermine the global and domestic practices of drug approval, manufacturing and trials but he also went ahead advertising the product without even taking necessary license to do so. He jumped into this madness with a bunch of media partners who do business with him, promoting his products regularly. In a fair and partial democracy this should be dealt with utmost seriousness. Both Patanjali and the media houses should be penalized for spreading misinformation that could have led to potential loss of life during a pandemic with the consumption of this unapproved medicine.