Tag: COVID-19

Who Said This About Vaccine Mandates?

Who said this?

The claim I am making here is very limited. If a person has decided personal convictions about the contagious disease he is carrying, the society in which he lives has an equal right to have decided and contrary convictions about that same contagious disease he has. And if there is an outbreak of such a disease, and the government quarantines everyone who is not vaccinated, requiring them to stay at home, the name for this is prudence, not tyranny.

Prudence, not tyranny.

Let’s see. COVID is a contagious disease. Correct me if I am wrong, but I have heard that there is an outbreak in the land of that contagious disease. Although government has not quarantined everyone who is not vaccinated, it sounds like this person would support such a dramatic move.

This view is quite bold and controversial. This person would likely be quite unwelcome at a MAGA rally. I know people who would be moved to red faced indignation at the mention of a government requirement for the unvaccinated to stay home.

Who is this bold contrarian? This defender of the greater and common good? This public health warrior?

I hope you are sitting down.

Doug Wilson.

Yes, that Doug Wilson. The 2015 Doug Wilson here.

Now in 2021 Wilson cracks on about fake vaccine identification cards, as in how and why to make them. Why would anyone do that? The 2015 Wilson said the government would be prudent to quaratine the vaccine refusers. Now, he advises people to “non-compliance with a clean conscious.” More directly, regarding the vaccine, he tells his readers: “First, if you are in a position to resist openly, do that.”

The 2015 Wilson told us that the government would be prudent to mandate a vaccine. The 2015 Wilson said:

Now I do have views on the efficacy of vaccines, but I want to address another element of this — the idea that even if they were effective, a requirement that everyone get vaccinated is necessarily statist and tyrannical. Why isn’t this a matter of personal choice and conviction? The answer is that it is not a matter of personal choice because everyone else is involved.

Now, Wilson counsels open resistance to what he calls a Biden power play.

But overarching everything was the obvious and naked nature of the power play that is being run. The Biden regime has already floated the idea of restricting interstate travel for the unvaccinated, and how would you do that without “papers please” checkpoints? Checkpoints everywhere a road passes from North Dakota into South Dakota. Don’t tell me I have a feverish imagination—I wasn’t the one who brought it up. Bans on interstate travel for the unvaccinated wasn’t my idea.

But something like it was his idea just six years ago. He said it would be prudent for the government to require the unvaccinated to stay at home. It seems to me that such a policy would prevent interstate travel. So about that feverish imagination…

Cynical me thinks that Rev. Wilson found himself an issue of real passion to conservative followers on the right and he is riding it. Maybe I didn’t read long enough to find out why he changed his mind, but the difference is striking. While we may not need a comprehensive quarantine, I think he may have been closer to correct the first time. Certainly, vaccine mandates for certain activities (work, school) have precedent and should not arouse the feverish response ginned up by the 2021 Wilson.

 

 

Eric Metaxas Goes Anti-Vax

Not only has Eric Metaxas become a conspiracy theorist when it comes to the 2020 presidential election, he apparently has gone full anti-vax.

I told you about his move into this world back in 2020. Now Metaxas is telling his followers not to get vaccinated.

(Metaxas has removed the tweet, but below is a screen cap of it)

Hat tip to Joemygod for this. I am blocked by Metaxas so I didn’t see it.

In May 2020, Metaxas had Kent Heckenlively on his radio show and gave him a 36 minute commercial for the anti-vax movement. Heckenlively was allowed to provide a full recitation of the anti-vax catalog of false claims and half-truths. Now it seems Metaxas has fully sided with the fringe and may push some people over the anti-vax edge.

He just keeps finding the edge of the fringe and jumping off.

The article that Metaxas links to is not by a scientist or virologist but by a conspiracy writer. In it, he writes:

It [the vaccine] is not a vaccine. Vaccines are actually a legally defined term. And they’re a legally defined term under public health law. They’re a legally defined term under CDC and FDA standards, and a vaccine specifically has to stimulate, both an immunity within the person receiving it but it also has to disrupt transmission. And that’s not what this is.

Here is the CDC definition of a vaccine: “A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.”

While there is a question about transmission with these vaccines, these questions don’t render the vaccine not a vaccine. Past vaccination efforts have had inconsistent results when it comes to transmission immunity. See this Scientific American article for more on that topic.

This 2009 scientific virology paper casts doubt on the notion that transmission prevention is a requirement to be a vaccine:

The benefits of reducing person-to-person transmission in the context of either an epidemic or a pandemic are clear. It is therefore appropriate that one of the main aims of vaccination is to limit transmission. Nevertheless, the efficacy of vaccines in blocking viral spread, either to or from the vaccinated individual, is not traditionally assessed in preclinical or clinical trials.

Beneficial? Yes. Required or “traditionally assessed?” No.

David Dark asks Simon & Schuster a very good question.

COVID-19 Doesn’t Play

I haven’t posted for awhile because I tested positive for COVID-19. It started out mild but then hit me hard. While I was able to stay home, I did feel pretty sick for about a week. While I am off quarantine now, I am still tired and don’t feel quite back to normal. Overall though, I feel blessed to have stayed out of the hospital.

I feel more certain than ever that mask wearing is necessary and churches should stop clutching their rights to meet together. We only have a few more months until a vaccine is widely available. Surely, we can wait a few more months to get together in large groups.

 

North Carolina: Churches Associated with 76 COVID-19 Outbreaks, 1,040 Cases, and 13 Deaths

As of October 21, NC will report clusters by location. Since May, religious gatherings have accounted for 76 clusters, 1040 cases and 13 deaths. According to the data shown in the chart below, religious gatherings are the third greatest source of cases associated with clusters behind meat packing plants and colleges.

I reported similar numbers from Georgia a few weeks ago.  I am keeping track of outbreaks in churches at this page:

Churches and the Spread of COVID-19

As of October 22, 2020, I count 552 religious gatherings associated with at least 6,724 cases of COVID-19 and 88 deaths in the U.S.

While Sean Feucht and others engage in potential superspreader events around the country, some churches are dealing with serious outbreaks and death of members.

 

A Conversation with Greg Thornbury: Wokeness, COVID Truthiness, the Consequences of Trumpism and Much More

My series of blogcasts this summer was fun and well received so I thought I would follow up with some additional conversations. The first one drops today and features Greg Thornbury, Vice President for Development at New York Academy of Art in NYC. Greg was once president of The King’s College in NYC and has a long history in evangelical institutions. I continue to get positive feedback about our first interview.

Greg and I discuss Eric Metaxas’ punch and run episode, COVID truthers, Al Mohler’s shift to Trumpism, the meaning of the recent conservative attacks on wokeness, and the potential bitter consequences of Trumpism.

Hope you find something of interest and enjoy the conversation. Please feel free to comment below.

Gregory Alan Thornbury, Ph.D., has been a college philosophy and theology professor, dean, and president of The King’s College in New York City. In addition to several books on theology and culture, he is the author of Why Should The Devil Have All the Good Music: Larry Norman and the Perils of Christian Rock (Random House, 2018) – a critically acclaimed biography that has been reviewed by The New York Times, The New Yorker, National Public Radio, and was awarded as the most influential book in arts and culture by Christianity Today for 2019. A popular writer and speaker on philosophy, religion, and the arts, he currently serves as Senior Vice President at the New York Academy of Art in Tribeca, founded by Andy Warhol. He is also a consultant for Good Country Pictures, who is currently working on film adaptations of the short stories and novels of Willa Cather, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor for film and television.

You can see all posts about these interviews by clicking this link.

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