As the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths ramp up and the nation prepares for what officials say will be the most horrific 2 week period of our lifetime, there are those who are still completely clueless when it comes to the coronavirus: Spring Breakers, Evangelicals, and Donald Trump.
Current Events
Sadly, the youth of America believe they are invincible and possess a short-term attention span that doesn’t allow them to see beyond a month or two. Evangelicals believe they are somehow above following rules like the rest of us and that prayer is the lone golden bullet to protect them from all harm. And Donald Trump continues to prove he is utterly unqualified for the severity of the moment.
Let’s take a closer look at each segment of the non-believers:
SPRING BREAKERS
We all saw the images of America’s Spring Breakers flocking to the beaches of Florida and beyond, boldly bragging to news cameras “If I get it, I get it” and that the virus was not that serious and was being blown out of proportion. Well, that was then and this is now.
According to The New York Times, 70 students, all in their 20s, flew on a chartered plane from the University of Texas at Austin to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico for a spring break celebration. Now, 44 of the 70 have tested positive for COVID-19. They join 5 University of Tampa students, a half-dozen University of Wisconsin fraternity and sorority members, and countless other Spring Breakers who were absolutely convinced the virus could never happen to them — until it did.
“The virus often hides in the healthy and is given to those who are at grave risk of being hospitalized or dying,” Dr. Mark E. Escott, the interim medical director for the city of Austin said in a statement. “While younger people have less risk for complications, they are not immune from severe illness and death from COVID-19.”
EVANGELICALS
A group of 60 members of the Skagit Valley Chorale in Mount Vernon, Washington decided to defy the state’s “stay-home” order to attend a choir rehearsal, believing they would avoid danger. Now, 2 people are dead and 45 people are ill due to COVID-19.
Last Sunday, sheriff’s deputies in Tampa, FL led Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne out of the River at Tampa Bay Church in handcuffs after he defied municipal stay-at-home orders by gathering hundreds to worship.
Police said the minister showed “reckless disregard for human life” by potentially exposing his congregants to the coronavirus. In his defense, Howard-Browne complained of “religious bigotry,” claiming that the church maintains a fundamental right to assemble in worship which can not be abridged even in an emergency.
On March 13th, Virginia pastor Landon Spradlin called the global response to the virus “mass hysteria” and broadcast with certainty that “It will come and it will go.” By March 25th, he was dead of COVID-19.
DONALD TRUMP
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell attempted to defend Donald Trump’s failure to act early against the coronavirus by claiming he was too “distracted” by the impeachment case levied against him. Realizing that the lie wasn’t landing, ‘The Donald’ quickly changed course last week and said his early denials of the virus was just his way of trying to be optimistic.
“I knew everything. I knew it could be horrible, I knew it could be maybe good,” Trump told reporters. “I don’t want to be a negative person.” He then added that the only reason he downplayed the pandemic and the devastation it would cause is because he wanted to be a “cheerleader” for the US and give people “hope.”
Yeah, right!
Since then, Donald Trump has become unhinged. He has completely hijacked the COVID-19 response team’s daily press briefings for his own aggrandization, actively blocked Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx from using their medical expertise to answer valid public health questions that didn’t fit the script of his alternate reality, lashed out with rude and condescending one-liners against reporters who asked questions that didn’t support his chosen narrative (On Monday, he called a CNN journalist a “third-rate reporter”), and basically turned the entire daily press briefing into an hour (or more) long nationally televised campaign rally for Donald Trump.
If that wasn’t enough, now there’s word why Trump has repeatedly promoted hydroxychloroquine as a miracle drug against COVID-19 despite dire warnings from his own medical team that the drug is not only untested but dangerous.
According to The New York Times, Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes hydroxychloroquine. So, it seems that pharmaceutical companies — as well as shareholders and senior executives with connections to Donald Trump — all stand to make a huge profit if the drug (designed to treat malaria) somehow becomes a mega-hit in the US.
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If anyone is curious as to why America is still not “flattening the curve” against COVID-19, the ignorance and inaction of Generation Z, Evangelicals, and Donald Trump is the likely answer.
Kids already make short term decisions and don’t know better. So we have to excuse them as fools. But Trump and those church pastors are just plain ignorant. And the people who follow behind them and do whatever they say are just as ignorant too.