Life in the Time of Coronavirus: We're Number One...in COVID-19 Confirmed Cases

Chart Credit: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) 

On the last week of March 2020, the United States of America reached a dark milestone in the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic: the number of confirmed cases in the country exceeded those in China for the first time. As of 7:57 AM on Friday, March 27, there were 85,996 reported cases in the U.S. and its territories (including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. 1,300 persons have died from COVID-19, including 365 in New York City alone, over the past three months. And as more cases get reported due to more testing and more people die due to the uncoordinated and even lethargic response by the inept and morally bankrupt Trump Administration, those numbers are likely to spike upward before they stabilize and then gradually slope down sometime in mid-spring.

Clearly, the current President of the United States, Donald Trump, is not up to the task of guiding this nation in a major crisis. Although he recently called himself a "wartime President" and pledged that he will lead America to victory in the war against the COVID-19, he has shown that he has no leadership skills whatsoever.

As the BBC's New York correspondent, Nick Bryant, observed in a recent article:

Nations, like individuals, reveal themselves at times of crisis. In emergencies of this immense magnitude, it soon becomes evident whether a sitting president is equal to the moment. So what have we learnt about the United States as it confronts this national and global catastrophe? Will lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who have been in a form of legislative lockdown for years now, a paralysis borne of partisanship, rise to the challenge? And what of the man who now sits behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, who has cloaked himself in the mantle of "wartime president"?

Of the three questions, the last one is the least interesting, largely because Donald Trump's response has been so predictable. He has not changed. He has not grown. He has not admitted errors. He has shown little humility.

Instead, all the hallmarks of his presidency have been on agitated display. The ridiculous boasts - he has awarded himself a 10 out of 10 for his handling of the crisis. The politicisation of what should be the apolitical - he toured the Centers for Disease Control wearing a campaign cap emblazoned with the slogan "Keep America Great".

I've written in previous posts in this Life in the Time of Coronavirus series about Trump's mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, so I'll not repeat myself here Suffice it to say, however, that his lack of intellectual acuity, his lack of honesty, and his delusional belief that the media and his political rivals were exaggerating the seriousness of the situation have all hobbled the nation's ability to cope with this public health crisis.

And to prove that this President's penchant for conspiracy theories and blaming others are responsible for the dire straits we now find ourselves in, some of his most avid supporters are now paying the price for buying Trump's "it's all a Democratic hoax" brand of snake oil.

As we all know by now, Evangelical Christians, especially in the South, are among Trump's most fiercely loyal supporters. So it's not surprising that many of them are the loudest voices that say COVID-19 is not as serious as the flu and that news stories that highlight the negative effects of the pandemic are exaggerations or even fabrications crafted by "evil" Democrats and the liberal "mainstream media" who want to hurt the President's re-election campaign.

One such voice is, or more accurately was, Landon Spradlin, a 66-year-old minister from Gretna, Virginia who died last night in North Carolina from a combination of COVID-19 and pneumonia.

Per the Concord (N.C.)-based newspaper, The Independent Tribune:

A Virginia man died Wednesday morning around 4:30 after battling COVID-19 and double pneumonia, his family told WDBJ-TV in Roanoke.

Sixty-six-year-old Landon Spradlin was a pastor in Gretna, Virginia before starting a traveling ministry with his wife.

March 17, Spradlin was admitted into the Atrium Cabarrus Hospital in Concord, North Carolina after testing positive for COVID-19, and was sedated the next day, WDBJ-TV reported.

Not mentioned in this story is a disturbing fact revealed by another article in Patheos.com. Spradlin not only was a traveling minister who had just visited a COVID-19 "hotspot" - New Orleans - and probably getting infected there at a religious gathering, but he had also been a vocal "it's all a hoax" Trump supporter.

According to Patheos.com:

Landon Spradlin, a Virginia pastor who claimed the “mass hysteria” around the coronavirus pandemic was part of a media plot against Trump, has died from the virus.....

On his Facebook page Spradlin shared a misleading meme attempting to minimize COVID-19, comparing the virus to the swine flu, and suggesting that the response to the coronavirus pandemic 
was media created “mass hysteria” to damage Trump:  

Facebook has placed a "partly false information" disclaimer on the meme Spradlin posted on March 13. (Image credit: Facebook) 

Unfortunately, Spradlin will probably not be the last Trump-supporting pastor who will get sick, perhaps fatally so, from the COVID-19 coronavirus. Other like-minded religious leaders have held services at their churches in defiance of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization's guidelines for social distancing and self-quarantines in order to avoid the spread of the virus.

In a recent story posted on CNN.com, the cable news network's religion editor, Daniel Burke, reported on a Louisiana pastor who held a religious service despite a ban on public gatherings of 50 or more individuals issued by the state governor:

On Tuesday night, just before the police arrived, Pastor Tony Spell stood in the pulpit of his Louisiana church and delivered a message to hundreds of worshipers before him and fellow believers around the world.

"I just want to encourage the religious world tonight, Amen!," Spell said in a sing-song voice, building to the crest of his sermon.

"Keep going to church! Keep on worshiping God! ... The church is a hospital for the sick! It's a place of healing for the brokenhearted!"

In holding services for so many followers at his Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Spell defied an emergency order by Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards banning public or private gatherings with more than 50 people to stop the spread of Covid-19.

"I feel the Covid-19 scare is politically motivated," Spell told CNN. He estimated his church hosted about 300 people for Tuesday's service.

As the deadly pandemic spreads, houses of worship around the world -- from the Vatican to storefront mosques -- have closed their doors. But a few like Spell defiantly refuse, arguing that they have a right to worship as they please, and that, with fears of contagion upending our daily lives, we need divine aid and prayer now more than ever.

While I respect the First Amendment's protection of religious rights and strongly support those who can be both people of faith and believers in science, I have major issues with people like Landon Spradlin, Tony Spell, and other pastors who put their flocks (and others) at risk because they mix political support for Donald Trump and their religious beliefs and call COVID-19 a "hoax." One pastor has already paid for this belief with his life. Who knows how many others Spradlin will yank to the grave with him?

Truly, there will be a reckoning for folks who buy the "it's all a hoax" story that these irresponsible individuals publicly profess.

Sources: 

Two people die from COVID-19 in Cabarrus, Mark Plemmons, Independent-Tribune, March 25, 2020


Pastor Who Claimed Covid-19 ‘Hysteria’ Was Plot Against Trump Dies From Virus, Mike Stone, Patheos.com, March 26, 2020

A Louisiana pastor defies a state order and holds a church service with hundreds of people, Daniel Burke, CNN, March 18, 2020