Viral Questions

It is our feeling at SoL, and the feelings of many others, that we are not getting the full story about the current virus scare. Notice to free people: When your way of life is interrupted, when a huge number of people's livelihoods are put on hold or lost, when the economy is grossly interrupted, when citizens are panic buying and hoarding, when children can't go to school, when parents can't go to work, when churches are closed down, all of this and more for an indefinite period of time, it is time to use our powers of critical thinking to the best of our ability.

People will hate us for bringing up doubts and questions. They will call us names and accuse us of actually killing people---yes, killing people just for asking questions, for exercising our brains, for keeping calm and carrying on mentally and emotionally. Someone has actually said to us that if we don't blindly obey orders, even suggestions, from the government (some of which are contradictory and arbitrary) we are part of the problem. Yes, we are the contagion itself.

Are people a disease? No. What ever happened to those brave cancer patients who refuse to identify themselves as their illness? We have been told that if we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem, that is, spreading a deadly disease which we most likely don't have and won't endanger anyone with whom we are visiting. This accusation came right off the bat from a New Yorker, single and with one child, who has actually recently left New York for this crisis to live with his girlfriend out of state, leaving his ex-wife and grown child there in NYC. He didn't mention anything about quarantining himself, which has actually been mandated for people leaving NYC. This is the person, much as we love him, warning us not to go near our many extended family members here in Utah and pretty much shaming us for having a large, close family. Really? First of all, he knows nothing about what we are doing. Second, it smacks of hypocrisy, suspicion, know-it-allishness, and a superiority complex. Third, this is a person who has abandoned his own family in the worst danger zone for the relative safety of a tiny midwestern town. Who really needs shaming, if that's what we're supposed to be doing? We mention this to show the extreme herd mentality and double standard being used by leftists/alarmists, which is supposed to keep us all thoughtlessly in line, whatever that line is from day to day.

It is very dehumanizing even during this scare, to automatically treat all people as a contagion, to look from afar with suspicion at anyone with silver hair, to suspect those with large extended families of visiting each other and lecture them for even thinking of it. Unreasonable suspicions aside, whatever happened to people risking their comforts, even their lives, going to help others in whatever need? There are altruistic people who do this all the time, including now, like firemen and policemen and mothers. There could be situations that override a virus scare. (And we learned to wash our hands in kindergarten.) What if our children and their children ran out of food and we had plenty? What if a daughter/mother of young children broke a leg or was incapacitated in some other way? What if that earthquake near us, which we felt, had been many times worse? Would anyone not rush to the aid of their children or their neighbors or anyone in immediate trouble, come what may?We would hope so!

Should this virus scare really take priority over just about everything else, even our humanity? When Utah had the pretty significant earthquake last week nobody around here seemed to care about the virus anymore, at least for one day.

Are some hospitals/emergency rooms more busy than usual? Yes, but this is nothing novel and we don't have to use sensational words like "overrun" even before they are, if ever, actually overrun. The majority of hospitals are not even anywhere near full at this time; the immediate problem is that people are acting like they are full to bursting. Gov. Cuomo is now (3/26-27) reporting the great news that the rate of  growth in the hospitalization of NY patients is actually decreasing, contrary to dire predictions. Even so, the wonderful thing is that hospitals adapt. They transport more supplies and equipment and personnel. They find more rooms. They train more workers. They weather the storm. They do their best, which is pretty darn good. Americans figure these things out because we are free and innovative and resourceful and generous.

The alarmism on the news about such things is unwarranted. How much air time has been spent on the pretended false inefficacy or shortage of surgical face masks alone? All that alarmism, instead of simply reporting the need for help in locating, and encouraging the producing of, face masks, which has finally occurred to people. Turns out you can make a serviceable face mask out of ubiquitous t-shirts according to the Center for Disease Control. Yes, you can. Panic and sensationalistic reporting is never good. 

An astronomy professor once said to his class, Don't worry about global warming or any other disaster. What we should concentrate on is a good healthy free society and economy. In that way, we can best deal with any crisis that comes along. Right?

More questions.

Is the U.S. anything like China or Italy? No. China is a communist country that is the opposite of America in many ways. China habitually silences truth-tellers, lies to the world to save face, and wants to control the world. Italians smoke like crazy, customarily kiss everybody, live with their aged parents, and have been importing Chinese workers for years who travel back and forth from Italy to China. Italy even started a "Hug a Chinese" policy during this crisis so they won't appear racist,which is actually racist. In addition, Italy's hospitals are not great. Many coddled Americans cannot imagine what such countries are really like.

Should we allow tunnel-visioned public health experts to run every facet of our lives? No. In a time of emergency other types of experts must weigh in equally. Health experts are only experts in one category, and human life has many aspects and priorities. The situation should be continually reassessed from every angle. But it looks for all the world like these particular experts are perfectly patient keeping us in suspense. Are we mere statistics to them? Are they enjoying the spotlight a little too much? Will they ever admit it if they were wrong or alarmist or doing more harm than good? Just asking.

Should this virus scare really take priority over almost everything else? Utah had a pretty significant earthquake last week. Funny how nobody cared about the virus, at least for one day.

Are we wrong in finding almost all virus headlines misleading? For instance, the news continually highlights the rising number of cases but doesn't make a distinction between people who are asymptomatic, people with mild cases, people who are very sick but not hospitalized and recover soon, and people with underlying bad health conditions who need hospitalization, and everyone in between. The headlines are therefore needlessly sensationalized. The reaction they seem to be after is: Oh, no! So many people are going to die! Instead, they could highlight the number of hospitalizations and call them that, which number is significantly less, and actually the reason we are all shut down. Healthy people are weathering this flu, much like the seasonal flu. 

Did you know 7,500 people die of this or that, including seasonal flu, every day in the U. S.? We need some perspective. How many will die of this virus on top of that? How many people who are being reported as dying of the virus would have died anyway of all sorts of problems perhaps combined with the seasonal flu within a week? Does anybody really know it was the virus that killed these sick people? Are autopsies done on every person included in the list of casualties? Is it really accurate to say they were COVID-19 victims? Or were they very sick people who were going to die soon anyway based on a primary illness or illnesses they already had?

Should we shut down or ban everything that regularly kills people? Did you know about 100 Americans die in automobile accidents per day. If, as Gov. Cuomo famously said the other day, we should do whatever it takes to save one life, shouldn't we ban cars immediately? Many lives would be saved every day.

If human life is so important (which of course it is), why are so many people and leaders still for killing unborn babies, even born babies? Why are so many all for government-run health care, where government officials get to decide if old people receive treatment, as in death panels? The same progressives who have been pushing the likes of global warming, population control, abortion, and euthanasia are now suddenly greatly exercised about stopping the world to save old, sick people. Why this sudden uncharacteristic concern for the value of human life? Isn't this total hypocrisy? And why are they playing this card? Is it because this experiment in unprecedented overreaching government control of the masses---such as the shutting down of churches and businesses (including gun stores), and the need for mass online schooling that could so easily be centralized and controlled by government---fits into their socialist playbook?

Isn't it telling that half the world of ordinary people are stuck at home where their powers of speech, creativity, worship, innovative talents, and livelihood (read:life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) may well be materially/psychologically oppressed for an unknown period, while at the same time journalists and public health experts and government leaders are enjoying unhampered their full freedoms of thought, speech, mobility, work, pay, and assembly?

Have we been primed for this sort of public treatment in the last century or two? Yes, we have been brainwashed by all sorts of progressive -isms, among them: atheism, Darwinism, secularism, humanism, socialism, communism, fascism, feminism and, yes, homosexualism.  How about the AIDS epidemic? You may think this is stretch but it was and still is a huge deal and we should learn from it. See a coming post.

How about this question: Are billionaire churches still requiring tithes and offerings of its members at this time? Are they even stepping up their requests for financial donations? Or are churches with billions suspending tithes and offerings at this time when so many members are being laid off and even losing their employment or business? Are they giving everybody at least some of their own money back in this time of  unprecedented worry, uncertainty, and stress? Have they even thought of  offering such relief, like the federal government has, and shouldn't state governments offer relief too, that is at least suspend taxes? Aren't a church's own members entitled to some of that famous humanitarian aid it brags so much about? Or some form of it? We have an idea that no matter what is said, there is not much real concern for the well-being of some churches' members.

What about this data business? Have the powers that be been operating on flawed data? For instance, what about this testing effort? We are seeing that the more testing for this virus that is done, the lower the rate of fatality goes. In other words, they are finding out there are many, many more people who have contracted the virus and never knew it or recovered who are not part of the testing data. This makes the predictions of the death rate, or how many people will die, grossly overstated. Why did the experts say the other day that people with no symptoms need not be tested? Shouldn't there be random samples taken in order to get a more accurate understanding of the scope and actual deadliness of this virus? The great majority of people can weather this bad flu. It's the life-threatening  deadliness/need for hospitalization that should be the concern. Flawed and incomplete data cannot provide accurate numbers for that. So is every precaution we are taking based on bad information? While it's always good to take precautions against illness, is all the alarm unnecessary? And even harmful?

Here's a funny one. Do news people even know their math, as in their zeros? Just the other week a news report got all sorts of flack for pretty much mistaking one million dollars for one dollar! So why should the public take journalists' word on all these many-zeroed statistics?

We are sure we will have more questions as this many-pronged nightmare continues and will add to this post. Keep reading! Keep using your brains! Lord bless us all!

Excerpt from a previous post that applies to this situation as well:

One result of these above recent developments is that lately we have seen many confused, frustrated, and sad faces, full of pain and suffering [or panic, suspicion, confusion, and uncertainty]. And we have seen some of these same people starting to wake up, starting to think for themselves, starting to let go of their trust in human beings, and turn to God. After all, the scriptures say we are cursed if we put our trust in men, cursed as in stagnated, deceived, harmed, even led to hell, perhaps. Therefore, shifting our religious [and other] responsibilities from others to ourselves and the Lord is one very good thing that is happening. We in the trenches must engage our God-given intellects, seeking the Spirit to discern truth and error, and guide our families. 


edited 3/27/20, 3/28/20