Fear Is Deadlier Than Viruses

[James S. Rustad]

You are trying to tell me that only 6% of those 750,000 people actually died of Covid?
Given the numbers discussed everywhere, including the conservative and wacko conservative media, I don’t see how I can believe that.

You might do better to cite some of those numbers (especially those on the "wacko conservative media" sites) than just making unsupported statements.

[Steven W Bohler]

You are trying to tell me that only 6% of those 750,000 people actually died of Covid?
Given the numbers discussed everywhere, including the conservative and wacko conservative media, I don’t see how I can believe that.

Well, your argument is not with me, it is with the CDC.  Those are their figures.  If you would bother to read the linked articles.

[JEdwards]

Using the CDC's own statistics, 94% of COVID deaths had at least one other co-morbidity.  Only 6% were deaths due strictly to COVID.

Well, yes, but death certificates routinely list many co-morbidities; many common ones are being overweight, being a smoker, having high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or asthma. Having a co-morbidity indicates that the individual does not enjoy ideal health, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the person was so decrepit and frail that he would have died in the near future anyway, virus or no virus. I’m happy to stipulate that COVID is extremely unlikely to kill a young, healthy athlete, but most Americans are near the middle of the bell curve, with at least one less-than-ideal health characteristic, so I don't think the statistics you cite undermine the significance of the reported death toll.
Peace,
Jon

[Charles Austin]

That is the point. The numbers are not exaggerated. You dismiss the “94%”. But they would’ve lived on, perhaps not healthy, but alive, had it not been for this virus.
To attempt to remove their death from the total statistics is curious,if not atrocious, if not obscene. They are all our neighbors who died of the virus, often because it had not been taken seriously, efforts to mitigate its affects were mocked or ignored , or people followed stupid advice..

[Dana Lockhart]

We are approaching 800,000 deaths in the US alone.

At the present moment, this virus is killing more people every three days than 9/11 did.

It has killed more than the entire opioid crisis.

Soon, every new car will be required to have a backseat monitor as a standard safety feature, because there have been 1,000 instances of babies dying from being left in the backseats of cars in the last 30 years. Where are the editorials decrying this overblown fear?

And at what point do these obtuse editorials stop? When Covid kills more than the combined combat fatalities of all wars fought by the United States? Would it be a real and rational fear then?

I think our response, as a nation, to 9/11 was excessive and ill-considered. But I also remember what those days were like, the real concerns that further attacks were imminent... you can only judge actions based on the information available to leaders at the time.

And given what we know about Covid, and what could have happened, and what might yet still happen, I think our leaders have managed as best they can. And they have done so despite the this persistent denial of the reality and lethality of this virus...  It's just a bad flu year... what's all the fuss about?

800,000 deaths later... a decade's worth of bad flu years in under 2 years... I think we should give this a rest.

But those 800,000 deaths are not deaths from COVID, they are deaths with COVID.  There is a huge difference.  Car accident victims, gun shot victims, heart attack victims, etc. who died from THOSE causes were/are included in the COVID deaths if they had (or even, in some cases, if it was merely suspected that they had) COVID.

I believe the CDC and other public health authorities have worked overtime to dispel this myth. For instance:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/podcasts/2021/20210319/TRANSCRIPT_STATCAST_031921.pdf

Money Quote:

HOST: Another example that has confused people in the past: someone is in a car crash and maybe the victim had COVID or develops COVID, and people get confused - how can COVID be responsible for somebody who's been injured in a car crash? What will you tell folks who are confused about that?

ROBERT ANDERSON: Well it really depends on the circumstances. In cases where the death is clearly the result of trauma caused by the crash, whether the decedent had COVID-19 or not should be irrelevant. COVID-19 is not a factor in those cases. Now, in these cases it should not be counted as COVID-19 deaths - because the trauma caused the death, not any sort of viral infection that person might have had. However, we do know of cases where people have been hospitalized with serious but not life-threatening trauma from a car crash, who contracted COVID-19 in the hospital and then subsequently died as result of COVID-19. So in a case like that the crash and the trauma might be a contributing factor, but the underlying cause was COVID-19. So that was the primary cause of death because that's what caused them to die when they died - it wasn't the trauma. So it's complicated and it does depend on the circumstances.

And the argument of died "from Covid" versus died "with Covid" is akin to the old saw about AIDS… no one "technically" died from AIDS, after all. But if you got HIV before there were effective treatments, that technicality wasn't going to give you much comfort.  Accordingly, every measure of excess mortality in the known world is showing that people are, actually, dying in this pandemic. And in large numbers.

And meanwhile, we're not even talking about all the other lasting effects of Covid… I've been part of a CDC recognized rehab program for long covid for the last six months. They are treating everyone from octogenarians who barely survived to NCAA athletes who were, previously, in peak physical condition. It took me 6 months of bi-weekly PT to be able to recover enough stamina to lead a halfway normal life, and I'm 39, but sure… covid is only a big deal for the elderly.

[Steven W Bohler]

We are approaching 800,000 deaths in the US alone.

At the present moment, this virus is killing more people every three days than 9/11 did.

It has killed more than the entire opioid crisis.

Soon, every new car will be required to have a backseat monitor as a standard safety feature, because there have been 1,000 instances of babies dying from being left in the backseats of cars in the last 30 years. Where are the editorials decrying this overblown fear?

And at what point do these obtuse editorials stop? When Covid kills more than the combined combat fatalities of all wars fought by the United States? Would it be a real and rational fear then?

I think our response, as a nation, to 9/11 was excessive and ill-considered. But I also remember what those days were like, the real concerns that further attacks were imminent... you can only judge actions based on the information available to leaders at the time.

And given what we know about Covid, and what could have happened, and what might yet still happen, I think our leaders have managed as best they can. And they have done so despite the this persistent denial of the reality and lethality of this virus...  It's just a bad flu year... what's all the fuss about?

800,000 deaths later... a decade's worth of bad flu years in under 2 years... I think we should give this a rest.

But those 800,000 deaths are not deaths from COVID, they are deaths with COVID.  There is a huge difference.  Car accident victims, gun shot victims, heart attack victims, etc. who died from THOSE causes were/are included in the COVID deaths if they had (or even, in some cases, if it was merely suspected that they had) COVID.

I believe the CDC and other public health authorities have worked overtime to dispel this myth. For instance:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/podcasts/2021/20210319/TRANSCRIPT_STATCAST_031921.pdf

Money Quote:

HOST: Another example that has confused people in the past: someone is in a car crash and maybe the victim had COVID or develops COVID, and people get confused - how can COVID be responsible for somebody who's been injured in a car crash? What will you tell folks who are confused about that?

ROBERT ANDERSON: Well it really depends on the circumstances. In cases where the death is clearly the result of trauma caused by the crash, whether the decedent had COVID-19 or not should be irrelevant. COVID-19 is not a factor in those cases. Now, in these cases it should not be counted as COVID-19 deaths - because the trauma caused the death, not any sort of viral infection that person might have had. However, we do know of cases where people have been hospitalized with serious but not life-threatening trauma from a car crash, who contracted COVID-19 in the hospital and then subsequently died as result of COVID-19. So in a case like that the crash and the trauma might be a contributing factor, but the underlying cause was COVID-19. So that was the primary cause of death because that's what caused them to die when they died - it wasn't the trauma. So it's complicated and it does depend on the circumstances.

And the argument of died "from Covid" versus died "with Covid" is akin to the old saw about AIDS… no one "technically" died from AIDS, after all. But if you got HIV before there were effective treatments, that technicality wasn't going to give you much comfort.  Accordingly, every measure of excess mortality in the known world is showing that people are, actually, dying in this pandemic. And in large numbers.

And meanwhile, we're not even talking about all the other lasting effects of Covid… I've been part of a CDC recognized rehab program for long covid for the last six months. They are treating everyone from octogenarians who barely survived to NCAA athletes who were, previously, in peak physical condition. It took me 6 months of bi-weekly PT to be able to recover enough stamina to lead a halfway normal life, and I'm 39, but sure… covid is only a big deal for the elderly.

1. "...should not be counted" is not the same as "are not counted".  And we know that some of those that, according to this little snippet, "should not be counted" WERE counted.  How many?  No idea.  But some (as the Colorado coroner pointed out in the case of the murder-suicide). 

2. No one has said that "covid is only a big deal for the elderly".

[Dana Lockhart]

We are approaching 800,000 deaths in the US alone.

At the present moment, this virus is killing more people every three days than 9/11 did.

It has killed more than the entire opioid crisis.

Soon, every new car will be required to have a backseat monitor as a standard safety feature, because there have been 1,000 instances of babies dying from being left in the backseats of cars in the last 30 years. Where are the editorials decrying this overblown fear?

And at what point do these obtuse editorials stop? When Covid kills more than the combined combat fatalities of all wars fought by the United States? Would it be a real and rational fear then?

I think our response, as a nation, to 9/11 was excessive and ill-considered. But I also remember what those days were like, the real concerns that further attacks were imminent... you can only judge actions based on the information available to leaders at the time.

And given what we know about Covid, and what could have happened, and what might yet still happen, I think our leaders have managed as best they can. And they have done so despite the this persistent denial of the reality and lethality of this virus...  It's just a bad flu year... what's all the fuss about?

800,000 deaths later... a decade's worth of bad flu years in under 2 years... I think we should give this a rest.

But those 800,000 deaths are not deaths from COVID, they are deaths with COVID.  There is a huge difference.  Car accident victims, gun shot victims, heart attack victims, etc. who died from THOSE causes were/are included in the COVID deaths if they had (or even, in some cases, if it was merely suspected that they had) COVID.

I believe the CDC and other public health authorities have worked overtime to dispel this myth. For instance:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/podcasts/2021/20210319/TRANSCRIPT_STATCAST_031921.pdf

Money Quote:

HOST: Another example that has confused people in the past: someone is in a car crash and maybe the victim had COVID or develops COVID, and people get confused - how can COVID be responsible for somebody who's been injured in a car crash? What will you tell folks who are confused about that?

ROBERT ANDERSON: Well it really depends on the circumstances. In cases where the death is clearly the result of trauma caused by the crash, whether the decedent had COVID-19 or not should be irrelevant. COVID-19 is not a factor in those cases. Now, in these cases it should not be counted as COVID-19 deaths - because the trauma caused the death, not any sort of viral infection that person might have had. However, we do know of cases where people have been hospitalized with serious but not life-threatening trauma from a car crash, who contracted COVID-19 in the hospital and then subsequently died as result of COVID-19. So in a case like that the crash and the trauma might be a contributing factor, but the underlying cause was COVID-19. So that was the primary cause of death because that's what caused them to die when they died - it wasn't the trauma. So it's complicated and it does depend on the circumstances.

And the argument of died "from Covid" versus died "with Covid" is akin to the old saw about AIDS… no one "technically" died from AIDS, after all. But if you got HIV before there were effective treatments, that technicality wasn't going to give you much comfort.  Accordingly, every measure of excess mortality in the known world is showing that people are, actually, dying in this pandemic. And in large numbers.

And meanwhile, we're not even talking about all the other lasting effects of Covid… I've been part of a CDC recognized rehab program for long covid for the last six months. They are treating everyone from octogenarians who barely survived to NCAA athletes who were, previously, in peak physical condition. It took me 6 months of bi-weekly PT to be able to recover enough stamina to lead a halfway normal life, and I'm 39, but sure… covid is only a big deal for the elderly.

1. "...should not be counted" is not the same as "are not counted".  And we know that some of those that, according to this little snippet, "should not be counted" WERE counted.  How many?  No idea.  But some (as the Colorado coroner pointed out in the case of the murder-suicide). 

2. No one has said that "covid is only a big deal for the elderly".

I encourage to read the entire interview, which goes to great length to describe how much effort is put into making sure numbers are as accurate as possible and reflect actual deaths from the virus. And the plural of anecdote is not data. If anything, the official number is a significant undercount, based on what is showing up in the data about excess deaths.

[Charles Austin]

Thank you, Dana Lockhart. I was trying to cut and paste the portions of that interview which debunked the “they didn’t really die from Covid” myth, but it got too complicated. Read the whole interview and the CDC Interpretation of the data. If anything, the number of deaths is under-reported.

[peter_speckhard]

https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/kmov.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/85/085be368-4ca2-11ec-8ca9-634fb8ef3e90/619d5946b9df6.pdf.pdf

This court case sets limits on what can be done by bureaucratic fiat rather than by vote of elected representatives to mitigate Covid.

[Dave Benke]

We are approaching 800,000 deaths in the US alone.

At the present moment, this virus is killing more people every three days than 9/11 did.

It has killed more than the entire opioid crisis.

Soon, every new car will be required to have a backseat monitor as a standard safety feature, because there have been 1,000 instances of babies dying from being left in the backseats of cars in the last 30 years. Where are the editorials decrying this overblown fear?

And at what point do these obtuse editorials stop? When Covid kills more than the combined combat fatalities of all wars fought by the United States? Would it be a real and rational fear then?

I think our response, as a nation, to 9/11 was excessive and ill-considered. But I also remember what those days were like, the real concerns that further attacks were imminent... you can only judge actions based on the information available to leaders at the time.

And given what we know about Covid, and what could have happened, and what might yet still happen, I think our leaders have managed as best they can. And they have done so despite the this persistent denial of the reality and lethality of this virus...  It's just a bad flu year... what's all the fuss about?

800,000 deaths later... a decade's worth of bad flu years in under 2 years... I think we should give this a rest.

But those 800,000 deaths are not deaths from COVID, they are deaths with COVID.  There is a huge difference.  Car accident victims, gun shot victims, heart attack victims, etc. who died from THOSE causes were/are included in the COVID deaths if they had (or even, in some cases, if it was merely suspected that they had) COVID.

I believe the CDC and other public health authorities have worked overtime to dispel this myth. For instance:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/podcasts/2021/20210319/TRANSCRIPT_STATCAST_031921.pdf

Money Quote:

HOST: Another example that has confused people in the past: someone is in a car crash and maybe the victim had COVID or develops COVID, and people get confused - how can COVID be responsible for somebody who's been injured in a car crash? What will you tell folks who are confused about that?

ROBERT ANDERSON: Well it really depends on the circumstances. In cases where the death is clearly the result of trauma caused by the crash, whether the decedent had COVID-19 or not should be irrelevant. COVID-19 is not a factor in those cases. Now, in these cases it should not be counted as COVID-19 deaths - because the trauma caused the death, not any sort of viral infection that person might have had. However, we do know of cases where people have been hospitalized with serious but not life-threatening trauma from a car crash, who contracted COVID-19 in the hospital and then subsequently died as result of COVID-19. So in a case like that the crash and the trauma might be a contributing factor, but the underlying cause was COVID-19. So that was the primary cause of death because that's what caused them to die when they died - it wasn't the trauma. So it's complicated and it does depend on the circumstances.

And the argument of died "from Covid" versus died "with Covid" is akin to the old saw about AIDS… no one "technically" died from AIDS, after all. But if you got HIV before there were effective treatments, that technicality wasn't going to give you much comfort.  Accordingly, every measure of excess mortality in the known world is showing that people are, actually, dying in this pandemic. And in large numbers.

And meanwhile, we're not even talking about all the other lasting effects of Covid… I've been part of a CDC recognized rehab program for long covid for the last six months. They are treating everyone from octogenarians who barely survived to NCAA athletes who were, previously, in peak physical condition. It took me 6 months of bi-weekly PT to be able to recover enough stamina to lead a halfway normal life, and I'm 39, but sure… covid is only a big deal for the elderly.

1. "...should not be counted" is not the same as "are not counted".  And we know that some of those that, according to this little snippet, "should not be counted" WERE counted.  How many?  No idea.  But some (as the Colorado coroner pointed out in the case of the murder-suicide). 

2. No one has said that "covid is only a big deal for the elderly".

I encourage to read the entire interview, which goes to great length to describe how much effort is put into making sure numbers are as accurate as possible and reflect actual deaths from the virus. And the plural of anecdote is not data. If anything, the official number is a significant undercount, based on what is showing up in the data about excess deaths.

Thanks for this, Dana Lockhart - going to a family gathering for Thanksgiving where one family member witnessed the devastations of COVID first-hand.  He has no patience for those who are misled and those who mislead.

Dave Benke

[RogerMartim]

Pastor Boehler, I am not sure why you want to deflect from the seriousness of COVID-19. It is not to be pooh-paahed. Even if one survives COVID-19, the long-term effects of it is still unknown. Many diseases can be a "side" effect of another which causes death. AIDS is one example. No one dies from AIDS. It is opportunistic diseases that take over a weakened immune system that is caused by AIDS. My best friend died of pneumonia but on his death certificate it lists AIDS as the cause of death. Obituaries list AIDS as the reason for death. My newspaper has listed many with obituaries where COVID-19 is the cause of death. So COVID-19 is a dangerous disease and we must take every precaution to minimize what it may do to us and others.
On this subject, I find it difficult to understand why so many are nonchalant about the mandate and vaccine choice. The Gospels are replete with admonitions of love of neighbor. It is obvious that there is a phase of a person being asymptomatic in which the virus can be passed on to others. In group settings such as many today at Thanksgiving dinners, this deadly virus will be passed on to many and I would not be surprised if there will be another huge spike in deaths of those who will not be around next Thanksgiving.
Fear doesn't kill. COVID-19 can and does.

[peter_speckhard]

Pastor Boehler, I am not sure why you want to deflect from the seriousness of COVID-19. It is not to be pooh-paahed. Even if one survives COVID-19, the long-term effects of it is still unknown. Many diseases can be a "side" effect of another which causes death. AIDS is one example. No one dies from AIDS. It is opportunistic diseases that take over a weakened immune system that is caused by AIDS. My best friend died of pneumonia but on his death certificate it lists AIDS as the cause of death. Obituaries list AIDS as the reason for death. My newspaper has listed many with obituaries where COVID-19 is the cause of death. So COVID-19 is a dangerous disease and we must take every precaution to minimize what it may do to us and others.
On this subject, I find it difficult to understand why so many are nonchalant about the mandate and vaccine choice. The Gospels are replete with admonitions of love of neighbor. It is obvious that there is a phase of a person being asymptomatic in which the virus can be passed on to others. In group settings such as many today at Thanksgiving dinners, this deadly virus will be passed on to many and I would not be surprised if there will be another huge spike in deaths of those who will not be around next Thanksgiving.
Fear doesn't kill. COVID-19 can and does.

The long term effect of the vaccine is also still unknown. That's one reason some people refuse to take it. I know at least one person who refuses to take it because the vaccine killed her father. My elderly parents who mostly stayed home anyway made a conscious decision last year that they would rather risk getting the virus than not have their children, grandchildren, and great-children visit them. While I am vaccinated, I know for a fact the people I'm talking about are wise and faithful Christians, so any account of mandate and vaccine resistance that explains it as simply unChristian behavior is demonstrably false. You have to come up with a different explanation or leave it alone. You and Charles both find it difficult to understand. Okay, fine. But if you could both say, "I don't understand," and leave it at that everything would be fine. Yes, you don't understand other people's choices. Maybe some day you will. But for sure the explanation is not that they are unfaithful, don't know the words of Jesus, are stupid, don't care about their neighbor, and any other such explanation.

[Brian Stoffregen]

Pastor Boehler, I am not sure why you want to deflect from the seriousness of COVID-19. It is not to be pooh-paahed. Even if one survives COVID-19, the long-term effects of it is still unknown. Many diseases can be a "side" effect of another which causes death. AIDS is one example. No one dies from AIDS. It is opportunistic diseases that take over a weakened immune system that is caused by AIDS. My best friend died of pneumonia but on his death certificate it lists AIDS as the cause of death. Obituaries list AIDS as the reason for death. My newspaper has listed many with obituaries where COVID-19 is the cause of death. So COVID-19 is a dangerous disease and we must take every precaution to minimize what it may do to us and others.
On this subject, I find it difficult to understand why so many are nonchalant about the mandate and vaccine choice. The Gospels are replete with admonitions of love of neighbor. It is obvious that there is a phase of a person being asymptomatic in which the virus can be passed on to others. In group settings such as many today at Thanksgiving dinners, this deadly virus will be passed on to many and I would not be surprised if there will be another huge spike in deaths of those who will not be around next Thanksgiving.
Fear doesn't kill. COVID-19 can and does.

The long term effect of the vaccine is also still unknown. That's one reason some people refuse to take it. I know at least one person who refuses to take it because the vaccine killed her father. My elderly parents who mostly stayed home anyway made a conscious decision last year that they would rather risk getting the virus than not have their children, grandchildren, and great-children visit them. While I am vaccinated, I know for a fact the people I'm talking about are wise and faithful Christians, so any account of mandate and vaccine resistance that explains it as simply unChristian behavior is demonstrably false. You have to come up with a different explanation or leave it alone. You and Charles both find it difficult to understand. Okay, fine. But if you could both say, "I don't understand," and leave it at that everything would be fine. Yes, you don't understand other people's choices. Maybe some day you will. But for sure the explanation is not that they are unfaithful, don't know the words of Jesus, are stupid, don't care about their neighbor, and any other such explanation.

I think that you need to explain to us how refusing to be vaccinated is a way of showing Christian love for neighbors.


Sometimes what is called faithfulness is not. For example, those who tell a blind person (or anyone with a handicapping condition,) "If you just had enough faith, God would heal you." (A comment from a speaker who was blind. Her response after hearing that too many times, "I read in the Bible that if you had enough faith, you could pray for me and God would heal me.")


Or, to use a probably untrue story: The minister got in the pulpit while silently praying that God would give him a message for that day. As he waited, he heard a voice in his head tell him, "You're lazy."


Some truth to that. When I was on gospel teams, there were folks who didn't want to work on their testimonies because they believed that God would give them the words to say. Were they being faithful and trusting or lazy? I've argued that if the Spirit can give them words in a split second, how much better might it be if the Spirit was working on them for an hour of preparation. (I also note that when Scripture state that the Spirit will give us the words to say, it's only in the context of being arrested and defending ourselves.)

[peter_speckhard]

Pastor Boehler, I am not sure why you want to deflect from the seriousness of COVID-19. It is not to be pooh-paahed. Even if one survives COVID-19, the long-term effects of it is still unknown. Many diseases can be a "side" effect of another which causes death. AIDS is one example. No one dies from AIDS. It is opportunistic diseases that take over a weakened immune system that is caused by AIDS. My best friend died of pneumonia but on his death certificate it lists AIDS as the cause of death. Obituaries list AIDS as the reason for death. My newspaper has listed many with obituaries where COVID-19 is the cause of death. So COVID-19 is a dangerous disease and we must take every precaution to minimize what it may do to us and others.
On this subject, I find it difficult to understand why so many are nonchalant about the mandate and vaccine choice. The Gospels are replete with admonitions of love of neighbor. It is obvious that there is a phase of a person being asymptomatic in which the virus can be passed on to others. In group settings such as many today at Thanksgiving dinners, this deadly virus will be passed on to many and I would not be surprised if there will be another huge spike in deaths of those who will not be around next Thanksgiving.
Fear doesn't kill. COVID-19 can and does.

The long term effect of the vaccine is also still unknown. That's one reason some people refuse to take it. I know at least one person who refuses to take it because the vaccine killed her father. My elderly parents who mostly stayed home anyway made a conscious decision last year that they would rather risk getting the virus than not have their children, grandchildren, and great-children visit them. While I am vaccinated, I know for a fact the people I'm talking about are wise and faithful Christians, so any account of mandate and vaccine resistance that explains it as simply unChristian behavior is demonstrably false. You have to come up with a different explanation or leave it alone. You and Charles both find it difficult to understand. Okay, fine. But if you could both say, "I don't understand," and leave it at that everything would be fine. Yes, you don't understand other people's choices. Maybe some day you will. But for sure the explanation is not that they are unfaithful, don't know the words of Jesus, are stupid, don't care about their neighbor, and any other such explanation.

I think that you need to explain to us how refusing to be vaccinated is a way of showing Christian love for neighbors.


Sometimes what is called faithfulness is not. For example, those who tell a blind person (or anyone with a handicapping condition,) "If you just had enough faith, God would heal you." (A comment from a speaker who was blind. Her response after hearing that too many times, "I read in the Bible that if you had enough faith, you could pray for me and God would heal me.")


Or, to use a probably untrue story: The minister got in the pulpit while silently praying that God would give him a message for that day. As he waited, he heard a voice in his head tell him, "You're lazy."


Some truth to that. When I was on gospel teams, there were folks who didn't want to work on their testimonies because they believed that God would give them the words to say. Were they being faithful and trusting or lazy? I've argued that if the Spirit can give them words in a split second, how much better might it be if the Spirit was working on them for an hour of preparation. (I also note that when Scripture state that the Spirit will give us the words to say, it's only in the context of being arrested and defending ourselves.)

I don’t need to explain any such thing. I simply need to point out that at least some people who refuse the vaccine are exceedingly faithful, loving, and wise Christians who lead lives marked chiefly by self-sacrificial live and service to their neighbor. Given that, your account if things remains implausible if it can only hold up by labeling such people falsely as foolish, selfish, etc.

[RogerMartim]

Pastor Speckhard, almost 195,000,000 people in the US have been fully vaccinated and you mention someone you know whose father died from the vaccine. This is an anomaly statistically speaking if this is what happened. It sounds almost like Nikki Minaj pontifically stating on TikTok that her cousin in Trinidad had a friend who was vaccinated and came away impotent with swollen testicles—none of which has been verified. I still say that love of neighbor supercedes any personal viewpoints that the vaccine down the road is going to turn someone into something whatever the imagination floats. It isn't love when someone says that they are going to take their chances.