COVID Mitigation Worked

 

Without a Plan

The impact of vaccines and behavior on US cumulative deaths from COVID-19

 America’s improvised strategy to fight COVID-19—public and private behavioral changes to slow transmission until vaccines could be deployed—prevented close to 800,000 deaths in the country. The ad hoc effort’s effectiveness is surprising because public health officials could not precisely target mitigation as they lacked precise information on the routes and mechanisms of the disease’s transmission.  -Brookings

What Worked?

Hand Washing

Masking

Social Distancing

Isolating

Testing

Lockdowns

Ad hoc measures to keep us safe were the best things we could do with no plan in place until the vaccine was developed. Research suggests without the ad hoc measures, COVID would have cost over two million lives instead of one million. It is estimated that vaccine hesitancy cost an additional 273 thousand lives.

There were two forces at work. The first group, people who had a a good idea of what needed to be done, forged ahead with solutions. 

The second group, people who were blown away by the enormity of the task, spent an inordinate amount of energy looking for somebody to blame. They looked for conspiracies from the CDC and HIH. They blamed the World Health Organization. They blamed China for deliberately releasing the virus as a form of warfare. Another conspiracy theory claimed it was a plot by the establishment to deny the president in his bid for reelection. None of this was supported by the facts. All of it got in the way, and put all of us at risk.

Thank God the first group persevered. 

Agents of Hope

 

QAnon and the Faithful

Commentary by Khari Brown and Ronald Brown in Sojourners examines the increasing connection between religion and support for QAnon. In a report release in May 2021 by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), 15 percent of Americans agree with QAnon allegations "that government, media, and financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who run a global sex trafficking operation." There's a statistic from the study that's hopeful,  82 percent of Americans disagree. What is disturbing is 23 percent of white evangelical Protestants, core Republican Party constituents, are QAnon believers. 

To paraphrase Mr. Rodgers, can you say False Prophet?

Baptist churchgoers in Missouri shared Facebook posts that claim Democratic party leaders are sexually trafficking and eating children.

Pew research went over data from 2020 and 2021. There is considerable evidence that most individuals are more likely to challenge the conspiracy theories  when they attend places of worship where clergy emphasize racial justice, democracy, , and scientific reasoning. Worship attendees who heard sermons supporting Black Lives Matter, 83 percent said QAnon is bad for the nation. Of those who heard preaching that identified Donald Trump's claims about election fraud as false, 64 percent held an unfavorable view of QAnon.

The commentary concludes, clergy and their pulpits have a critical role in encouraging Americans to think critically about conspiracy theories that damage our democracy and cloud our understanding that we all are created in God's image.

Conspiracies and Friends

Confronting Truth

Recently I had a friend write to me lamenting the loss of friendship over politics and conspiracies. There was a time when friends could disagree over politics and still be friends, and still have respect for each other. For some, that has become impossible. My friend wrote that their Trumpian politics caused a divide that had become a chasm. He's mourning the loss.

I wrote him this response:

I've found the only thing I can really do when I get into a conversation with a conspiracy theorist is listen. I'm still firm on my points, but confronting them with the facts won't change much. They need to reach a point of critical thinking on their own. For some, reaching that point may be too late. Think about how COVID is decimating the unvaccinated. The realization comes in the moments before death.

80 million eligible persons remain unvaccinated because of deliberate misinformation. The rate of infection is now the highest it has ever been. These are people who believe there are alternative facts.

Booker T. Washington had an understanding of the sad truth behind populism.

  

"A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good, just because it's accepted by a majority.”

Our friends from Ripon have no excuse. Our experience at a liberal arts college was supposed to make us critical thinkers. Did they waste that opportunity? Now, their views have broader implications because they're putting all of us at risk.