A clove of prevention is worth a bulb of cure

The stinking rose more closely resembles its namesake as of late:

If you want to get rich in China, the way to do it this year is to buy and sell garlic. The Chinese have always had a taste for the bulb vegetable that makes your breath smell but now there has been an incredible surge in its price, which makes the property boom look static by comparison. Garlic has been a better investment this year than gold or silver.

Of course, I fully expect doubt to be cast upon any preventative measures (other than properly shielding one's sneeze, or the compulsive washing of hands, as advised by the High Priestess of HHS) that are of non-pharmaceutical origins, and doubly so if they're just "weeds". (Unless it's actual weed, in which case, you'll need to get a "green card" and live on the West Coast.)

"Those wacky Chinese! Don't they know that commodities are dead, and plants are only meant to be potential cures for cancer in obscure equatorial countries?"

Now, I'm not advocating that you should sell your house and buy rural real-estate for the purposes of growing vast tracts of garlic (typically, you should have at least a few more reasons, just for the sake of argument), since domestic consumption is likely to remain low. Come what may, I'll be planting everything available to me in January.

Pharmaceutical companies do very little of their own research, and have a long history of copying over the shoulder from folk medicine. My suggestion: cut out the middle-man. I'm already supplementing my diet with garlic, Vitamin D3, Vitamin C, St. John's Wort and green tea; I suggest you do the same. (Associated article here; if the strains that are currently active are indeed causing a severe cytokine response, one would ideally avoid foods that boost that response... This is for informational purposes only, your mileage may vary, I'm not responsible for your lack of personal research, etc.)

(Via SurvivalBlog.)