Eastern Oregon churchgoers thought Jesus would protect from COVID-19. He didn't.

Here's another in the endless supply of reasons not to be religious. Or, if you want to be religious, to not be a fundamentalist. It destroys your ability to engage in critical thinking.

Meaning, using reason to learn how the world works, and to act in accord with that wisdom.

Oregon, where I live, has done much better than most states during the COVID-19 crisis. In large part that's because we have a Democratic governor, Kate Brown, who put in place a stay at home order early on and has managed reopening in a judicious fashion, allowing counties to relax social distancing rules only if they meet certain guidelines.

In the generally wide open spaces of Eastern Oregon, Covid cases have been minimal. But that changed when a massive outbreak occurred in Union County. 

It didn't take long to figure out that the source of the outbreak was a church that defied public health rules that were in effect. Today the Portland Oregonian has a story about the idiocy of the Lighthouse Pentecostal church.
Download Everything we know about the eastern Oregon church at the center of state’s largest coronavirus outb

Apparently members of the church somehow thought that Jesus, or God, would overrule the laws of nature and virus transmission in favor of their true believing selves.

Well, that blind faith didn't work out well for them. I'd like to think that this will make them put more trust in science and reason than in the fantasies embodied in their Pentecostal teachings, but almost certainly this won't come to pass. 

Here's excerpts from the Oregonian story. 

A church in a small eastern Oregon county linked to the state’s largest coronavirus outbreak held worship services in the weeks before hundreds fell ill.

At least 236 coronavirus cases are tied to Lighthouse Pentecostal Church, near La Grande in Union County. The number of cases in Union County increased tenfold, from 22 to 240, in three days after the outbreak came to light. The outbreak led Union County to voluntarily return to Phase 1 of Gov. Kate Brown’s phased reopening plan — the county had been at Phase 2 when the outbreak happened. There are now 258 coronavirus cases in the county of 27,000 people.

Leaders of Lighthouse Pentecostal Church have remained silent for the most part about the outbreak. Yet social media posts and interviews with other faith leaders shed light on how the church came to be at the center of Oregon’s largest coronavirus outbreak, and how it has responded since.

The church, which operates in Island City near La Grande, has held several gatherings since May that appear to have violated Brown’s restrictions to limit the spread of coronavirus.

In a May 22 Instagram post, Lighthouse Pentecostal Church said it would begin in-person services Memorial Day weekend “in accordance” with President Donald Trump’s demands that states allow churches to open. At the time, Union County was still in Phase 1 of reopening, in which religious groups are not allowed to convene in large groups. The governor allowed faith groups to meet in gatherings of 25 people if congregants stayed a certain distance apart.

A Facebook video uploaded May 24 by the church showed hundreds of worshipers in the church dancing, singing and moving around in close proximity. The video was later deleted.

A faith leader at the church wrote in a Memorial Day Facebook post that he was proud to be an American, listing one of the reasons as being “able to attend church in our building.”

...Pastor Dan Satterwhite, who leads an affiliated Lighthouse Church in Pendleton, pointed to a Bible verse that he said may have guided the decision to hold services in Union County: Hebrews 10:25.

The verse instructs Christians to have personal contact with each other in order to live out the faith they proclaim, Satterwhite said. It tells believers how to help each other move toward love and good deeds, “Not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another — and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

...Before the outbreak, the church’s Facebook page published updates nearly every day. The posts included videos of preachers delivering daily devotionals, livestreams of church services and advertisements of free supplies the church offered to people in need earlier in the pandemic.

The church stopped posting on its public Facebook page Wednesday and has deleted all posts from after June 12. On June 17, it created a private Facebook page.

A person who answered the phone at the church June 15 hung up when The Oregonian/OregonLive asked about the Union County coronavirus outbreak. Every day since, the church has not answered the phone or responded to emails.

Three different leaders of the church declined interviews with The Oregonian/OregonLive.

In a now-deleted daily devotional video published June 16 on Facebook, Pastor James Parker appeared to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I appreciate everybody being cooperative with what was decided and doing your best to help,” Parker said. “In the end, our fruit will show that what we’re doing is the right thing, and more people need to do what we did. The more people that do the right thing, the easier it’s going to be for the rest of the world to combat this pandemic that we’re going through.”

Parker did not further explain what “the right thing” is, and the church did not respond to a request for clarification.

Comments

[j]

"Oregon, where I live, has done much better than most states during the COVID-19 crisis. In large part that's because we have a Democratic governor, Kate Brown, who put in place a stay at home order early on and has managed reopening in a judicious fashion, allowing counties to relax social distancing rules only if they meet certain guidelines."

How do you figure? The New York Times just listed California as a state where the viruses are supposedly rising, and California was from the start (and has been for the last 3 months) more strict about lockdowns that Oregon has ever been.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html

Also, a lot of the supposed increase of cases has to do with differences in who's getting tested for the virus, how many people are getting tested, how these statistics are compiled and reported, etc. Kudos for a democatic gov? Obviously not that one in NY, or the one's that are freely letting their citizens burn destroy and loot in the name of kill whitey.

It's a mystery to me why anyone would revel in this interminable lockdown of our society and the mass incarceration of healthy citizens. Never before in history has American society been told they have to give up their Constitutional rights because someone might get sick from a virus that most people will never get, and hardly anyone will die from.

The solution to this virus problem is obvious. If you fear getting this or any virus, you simply stay home. It's the same solution for fear of anything -- you take personal precautions if you feel you're at risk, but you don't make your fear the problem of all of society. You don't demand that children stay out of school. You don't blithely ignore the fact that thousands of businesses have gone under and suicides are at an all-time high because of this senseless lockdown.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/suicides-are-at-an-all-time-high-we-need-hope-more-than-ever/2019/06/20/b591702e-9396-11e9-b58a-a6a9afaa0e3e_story.html

[myopicthinkingisdangerous]

Nature Journal has posted this finding

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2404-8

[Spence Tepper]

J
You are confusing infection rates with death rates. Covid deaths make it one of the worst killers in the world today.

This year, Covid 19 is the number one killer among several major causes of death in the world, including hunger and malaria, war, drugs, flu, fire, terror, poisoning, meningitis, etc

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2634167/?fbclid=IwAR2GUVbdrex7feXZV01UPz_uJ4BScgucQpzi_500qXhQVslsLwnruRur0EE

Therefore it's everyone's job to help control the spread of this highly contagious disease that is ten times more contagious than the flu and five times more deadly.

And that means you wear your mask, you social distance, and you trace infections, which means you test as much as possible. Especially if you wish to end lock downs safely.

The solution to ending lockdown is compliance to these simple measures. And it is lack of compliance in America that has lengthened the necessity of lock down. America is the example to the world of the worst Covid death numbers that remain persistently high because for some reason or another people are not following the guidelines and wearing their masks, cleaning their hands, and social distancing.

When people don't follow these measures, death rates continue to remain high, because folks are infecting other folks. And therefore they carry responsibility for causing those deaths.

That means you actually have a responsibility for contributing to public safety. And you are culpable for harming other innocent people. The persistent death rates in America are hard evidence we aren't following the basic public health rules.

Calling people scared for practicing good hygiene during the worst pandemic in a century us oddly ignorant. But if some politician or extremist group whose skin color I won't mention, politicizes this by refusing to wear a mask in areas where they can contaminate others, or contaminate testing equipment, even while they carry assault weapons, then I would just mention one thing:

If you aren't afraid then why the assault weapons? If God is taking care of you and you don't need a mask, then why do you need a gun?

And if you love God, then treat each other with love and respect. Wear your mask, social distance, wash your hands, get tested of you have symptoms. If you don't like lock downs then stop causing them.

[Spence Tepper]

Wear a mask out of love, not fear.

[Dungeness]

@ Also, a lot of the supposed increase of cases has to do with differences in
@ who's getting tested for the virus, how many people are getting tested,
@ how these statistics are compiled and reported, etc.

I realize you added "alot" but it's not "supposed". Sporadic spikes in
Covid-19 hospitalizations/deaths are real and definitive so there are
increases in new infections. Real ones. They can't be swept aside
or fogged over as quirks of testing.

Otherwise hosp/death's wouldn't leap off a graph's trend line. They
do. They mushroom up even in areas that have started to plateau.
They are occurring at an alarmingly rapid clip in multiple states and
internationally too.