Flour Figurines as Offerings in the Age of the Virus?

I'm fascinated by a set of Chinese flour figurines, created by master artisan Zuo Ansheng, evidently in early February 2020, honoring medical workers combatting the COVID-19 crisis in his home region of Yinan county in east China's Shandong province: 

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/zuo-ansheng-a-flour-figurine-master-makes-flour-works-news-photo/1199162198?adppopup=true

Since at least the Han period, skilled Chinese artisans have created these kinds of elaborate figurines out of mixtures of wheat and glutinous rice flour (leavened at times with honey, wax, and paraffin), often as decorations or offerings at Chinese New Year or other festive occasions. The figurines tend to depict divinities, mythological figures such as the Monkey King, Zodiac animals ,and classical literary characters. Carefully prepared, dyed dough paste is sculpted with bamboo and other tools, to create remarkably lifelike miniature figurines. 

As in many East, South, and Southeast Asian contexts, these sculptures tend to play on core foundational paradoxes of votive images, they are at one level manifestly representations, but in another sense are understood as the represented being itself. They must usually be treated with respect and honored during the course of a festivity or ceremony, and must be disposed of according to proper protocols, even when eaten. The ephemeral quality of the flour figurines seems to make them especially precious, particularly appropriate for temporary events, such as New Year celebrations.  Even when they are sold as handicrafts, they appear to retain some numinous qualities  One northern Chinese artist explains, "Each of my works contains a story, and each figurine has its own soul," (Xinhuanet, 7.22.19) 

It is hard to know without speaking or corresponding with Zuo Ansheng himself, but I suspect that these medical workers, fully swathed in protective garments and face masks, should be understood as more than mere decor or ornaments. They seem to share many classic qualities with ritual offerings, carefully balanced according to principles of symmetry. The two figures in the foreground are supported each by a hand gently touching one another (fully gloved) almost as if in a ceremonial dance.  Perhaps the taller one to the left is a male, and  the shorter one to the right is female. All seem enlivened by their outlined eyes and arched eyebrows, the rest of their faces obscured by protective masks.

Speculatively, I  wonder if in the mind of the artist, or those who gaze upon these sculpted objects in the epidemic zone, the figurines might be understood to be efficacious, as not simply honoring these heroes and heroines of the nation, but as in formal offerings, conferring a degree of protection upon those who create or encounter them. It may also be that Zuo Ansheng is drawing here upon the ancient Chinese practice of mortuary effigies, through which ancestral beings are given vitality and honored though mimetic representation, in ways that help safeguard their descendants across the generations, or, as with statuary buried armies, charged with protecting and serving the Dead in the Other world. The artist may be directly honoring those who have died in service to their patients, or evoking, through this transitory medium, the very real possibility that frontline medical staff may imminently pass from this world.