>>17859557 (OP)So I looked up the relevant passage in Leviticus, and the weird bird ritual is actually for treating a diseased *house* not a person. It actually sounds like it's describing mold. And the method for dealing with it, given in full, is that the people should be evacuated and the house shut up for some time. And if the disease seems to be growing, then the affected parts of the house should be thrown out. Then the house should be shut up again, and if the disease reappears then the whole house should be torn down and taken outside the city. It's only if the disease doesn't come back after the affected parts are removed that the weird bird ritual is done -- after the house has already been pronounced clean, like a symbolic confirmation of it's cleanliness.
Worth a read:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2014&version=NRSVUE
Honestly superior to modern times imo, at least in the US, where dealing with mold is mostly left up to the individual or to whoever owns a property rather than being considered worthy of a formal public system for dealing with it.