Millie LaFontaine lives in Concord.
It’s harvest time for garlic in my community garden. Last fall I planted almost 200 of my best cloves from last summer’s crop, covered them with mulch, and waited.
There they were this spring, their hopeful shoots standing erect through the straw like a marching band, greeting me when I returned. They have grown as they should, reaching their arms up in their neat rows.
In June they pushed out their whimsical garlic scapes, curlicues of green, like a parade of trombones and tubas. Now the tall slender plants are turning brown, a sure sign that the bulbs underground are ready to be harvested, to the fanfare they deserve.
I really didn’t know about garlic as a child. My mother, excellent cook though she was, said that a garlic clove, sliced in half and rubbed inside her salad bowl, was more than enough. Using more than that was to risk alienating the people she meant to please.
I had heard that the Italian grandmother of a classmate of mine hung a wreath of garlic on their door to ward off the “evil eye.” I laughed at this and pretended to be disgusted. Then I learned to cook Italian food.
I’ve since learned that garlic has been prized around the world since time immemorial. I’ve learned from actual experience that, despite what my mother thought, it tastes fantastic. I’ve also learned that, through the millennia, it has been touted to have countless medicinal, anti-inflammatory, and antibiotic properties. It’s thought to do much more than ward off the “evil eye.”
Some of these claims have merit, but which ones? In looking online, I encounter the same unfortunate thicket of information that people find when they do an internet search in their preferred online bubble. I could find anecdotal reports of its miraculous properties in abundance, but few, if any, careful studies of its actual effects, beneficial or otherwise.
It reminds me of the quandary we’ve backed ourselves into regarding the pandemic. Ironically, we have vast reams of good data about COVID prevention, precautions and treatment. It seems, however, that more people than not prefer to disregard valid studies done in a rigorous fashion, and instead latch on to something they heard from their favorite personality or politician.
For example, some people believe they need to demand that hydroxychloroquine be available in pharmacies for them to ward off COVID. After all, a certain former president said he took it and it worked for him. (This same person also suggested that injecting bleach might also work.)
To me, this is like looking down the rabbit hole and concluding that garlic is a powerful aphrodisiac. After all, it was prescribed by Ayurvedic practitioners to help bridegrooms on their wedding night.
When vaccines were developed, they were incredibly effective. However, there were all kinds of obstacles to getting them into the arms of patients, not the least of which was vaccine hesitancy. Although good data about their effectiveness and safety were readily available, too many people listened to conspiracy theorists and others rather than seek out the data or trust people who actually knew what they were talking about. Perhaps these people would be better off fearing the “evil eye” than fearing the good news back then.
Was that really only a little more than a year ago? It already seems like pre-history. Now some are saying they are still justified in avoiding vaccination. After all, look at all those vaccinated people who are getting reinfected with the latest variant, BA.5.
What they would learn, if they looked carefully enough, is that the vaccines still work to greatly reduce the likelihood of ICU stays and death. The data are confusing but still compelling. And the more people get sick the more opportunities the virus has to mutate.
Back when the pandemic started, I had a good deal of confidence that the principles of scientific inquiry and the advice of our authorities on public health would guide us through to the other side of this very real threat. Now, as the virus gives every indication that it is here to stay with us in endemic form, I see once again how messy human nature is.
We’d rather pick and choose what we want to believe, and make claims based on anecdotal evidence, and we definitely don’t like to do the hard work of analyzing information objectively or relying on proven experience.
It seems we’d prefer to live in a world of superstition and blame our woes on an “evil eye” rather than agree to work together against a common enemy.