Where are the Prayer Campaigns?

I’m still trying to figure coronavirus out.

Case figures rose dramatically when the virus first got a foothold in the US. I said I thought the numbers would rise exponentially and then peak, and that’s what they did. I didn’t think there would be a second wave, because epidemics generally don’t work that way. I never saw a logical explanation why a second wave should occur. The disease was already here, it had hit whoever it could hit easily, and then it had declined. It wasn’t like a new group of susceptible people was going to materialize out of nowhere, and our behavior wasn’t likely to change much and produce new cases, so where would a second wave come from?

Now the figures are going up again.

I could just say I was wrong, but these are strange times. Nothing is what it seems. There are two camps in America: the anti-Trump, pro-panic camp, and the pro-Trump, anti-panic camp. The first camp has lied to us over and over in order to make Trump look bad, hoping to drive him out of the Oval Office. You would have to be a fool to take anything they say at face value, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be right about the second wave.

I think some medical professionals are calling it the continuation of the first wave. I have not seen anyone explain the difference between a second wave and the continuation of the first wave, however. I don’t know how they would look different.

Testing has skyrocketed, and the case figures have also skyrocketed. President Trump says the increase in the figures is the result of the increase in testing. That actually makes sense, because these things happened at the same time, and it would be impossible to increase testing without detecting more cases. On the other hand, it’s possible to have a genuine increase in the infection rate along with a fake bump caused by increased testing.

President Trump has ample reason to push the claim that the new numbers are the product of testing, not increased contagion, and as much as I love Donald Trump, I’m aware that he has a habit of talking first and checking the facts later.

Who is right? The huge percentage of America that has been turned into a coronavirus-hysteria propaganda machine, or the president who exaggerates his successes?

I see news articles about the current situation, and they’re full of claims that look deceptive to me. One article says 81% of Florida ICU beds are full. Here’s the obvious question: what percentage are normally full? I’ve been in ICU’s in normal times, and they have generally had few empty beds. Even if the epidemic is getting worse, only a tiny percentage of Americans have become ill, and even fewer have had to go to intensive care. The numbers still resemble flu numbers. So how can I believe Florida ICU’s are jammed up? It seems to me that the claim is meaningless and intentionally misleading.

It appeared in an article which took a negative and condescending tone toward President Trump, so that also reduces its credibility.

Many people think the disease has been here much longer than doctors are telling us. It was active in China in the fall, and Chinese people were flying to America during that time. If coronavirus is as contagious as the pro-hysteria people say, then Americans had to begin contracting it no later than November. If that’s so, then the disease is a lot more common than we used to think, and increased testing, especially when it reaches people with light symptoms, should generate a lot more positives than we’re used to.

The CDC is now saying 20 million people in the US may have been infected. How are we supposed to believe anything they say? I think they’re right, but they keep changing their minds.

A month or so ago, I could not get tested in Florida. I had no symptoms, and they didn’t allow asymptomatic people to be tested. As of a few weeks back, that changed. They decided to allow everyone to be tested. What would the natural result be? People who weren’t sick, yet who were still curious, would go in for testing, and you could see a higher positive rate. That’s what we’re seeing. The tests only caught active cases, so there was no point in me going.

Florida just had a huge case-number jump. Thousands in one day. They told us the numbers went up, but no one seems to be asking whether anything else happened the same week. Were new testing methods put in place? Did waves of new test kits arrive more or less simultaneously in many areas, allowing more testing? What is the rate of false positives? We aren’t being told.

Anti-Trumpers are blaming the removal of the lockdowns, which was supposed to occur regardless of what Trump wanted, and the implication is that we would have remained locked down but for the GOP. That’s absurd.The lockdowns were always intended to be temporary measures that would slow the epidemic without getting rid of it. This is what doctors, not Donald Trump, have told us. Let’s play the game anyway, though. If getting rid of lockdowns made infections jump, why didn’t weeks of protesting without social distancing have the same effect? Why did New York find that most new infections took place among people who were locked down? Why is it that confined populations, who should be immune, still make up something like half of the numbers?

One thing does surprise me. I’m surprised the warm weather didn’t bring us a sharp drop in cases. UV rays kill coronaviruses nearly instantly, and warm weather gets people out of confinement. We did see infections plummet in the spring, but even if the new numbers are grossly misleading, the bug is still here.

Covid is still hitting Hispanics, blacks, and American Indians much harder than everyone else. Can that have any conceivable cause that isn’t supernatural? They do what white people do, more or less. What natural reason is there for them to get sick more often?

The more I look at the epidemic, the more I feel that it hits leftists harder. It seems like a Biblical plague, because it appears to be targeted. Even in my county, where minorities are not all that abundant, they make up a very disproportionate number of the cases, and minorities other than Asians lean left.

I’m not sure what’s happening, but I don’t trust the hysterics at all. They have lied to us consistently for too long.

I bought my first masks today. That’s not completely true. I once had to buy a cheap mask in order to get into a gun show, and some friends of mine gave me a flowered mask that might look good on Caitlyn Jenner. Today I got some real cloth masks at Target. You can buy them these days. The hoarders stopped cleaning them out.

I didn’t buy them out of concern for myself. A cloth mask is just about worthless for self-protection. I bought them in case I get sick. They would provide a little protection for people around me. I think I had covid in the winter, but I may be wrong, and I could still get it. Maybe the epidemic really is getting worse in Florida. Might as well spend 10 bucks on preparation.

Almost no one seems to be promoting self-humbling, repentance, and prayer as remedies for coronavirus, shortages, and violence. It’s very sad. Our problems are obviously caused by rebellion and pride, but no one seems to know it.

America is a former Christian country, and there are still many Christians here. We should know that when a nation has problems like ours, it means something has messed up our relationship with God. In the Bible, when Israel had problems, there was always a reason involving God. They would fast and pray and ask God what was wrong, or a prophet would show up and tell them, and then they were able to alter their behavior and regain favor. That’s not happening in America right now. We act as if we’ve never seen the Bible.

Where are the preachers calling for a nationwide week of prayer and fasting? There are a few dimly heard appeals out there, but that’s about it. Shouldn’t prayer and humbling be our first responses, every single time? How can we not know that?

I don’t see how we can get past our mini-plagues without doing the right thing. Because we won’t admit fault and seek God’s face, I expect us to get worse and worse.