The World Prefers the Disease to the Cure

It’s surprising how hard it is to find out where the Omicron variant has taken hold in the US. I had to do several searches and compare results. Here is the most up-to-date list of states I was able to locate:

California
Colorado
Connecticut
Georgia
Hawaii
Louisiana
Maryland
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Missouri
Nebraska
New Jersey
New York
Pennsylvania
Utah
Washington
Wisconsin

I’ll save you some trouble: the number of states is 17. And as you can figure out for yourself, that’s almost exactly one third of our states. Since California, New York, and Pennsylvania are on the list, it’s a large fraction of our population.

Here’s a question to which I have not seen the answer in the press: how good is the world’s ability to test for Omicron? How can we know where it is if we can’t test for it?

It has been less than two weeks since Omicron was reported to WHO (Should I call it “the WHO”?), so can it be possible that every nation in the world now has test kits that distinguish Omicron from Delta?

Another question: does Omicron show up at all on tests that detect the more-familiar variants?

If the old tests don’t pick up Omicron, we may have Omicron all over the place and not know it, especially if it’s mild. A lot of people would get false negatives, and if they weren’t very sick, many others wouldn’t bother getting tested.

If Omicron testing isn’t available everywhere, and Omicron doesn’t show up on the old tests, then a lot of Omicron cases are hidden. If Omicron testing isn’t available everywhere, and Omicron does show up on the old tests with no indication that it’s Omicron, then who knows how many Omicron cases are misidentified as Delta?

You could go nuts listing different factual scenarios and trying to figure out the consequences.

Our leaders, scientists, and journalists are completely incompetent when it comes to presenting facts that help the public understand what’s happening. I assume scientists are thinking about the important questions, because they would have to be really stupid not to, but their logic is not filtering down to you and me. Politicians are generally not smart enough to figure out what’s important, and journalists are even less bright.

Let’s look around the web.

Wikipedia has the answer, or maybe it doesn’t. It says existing PCR tests are able to “detect the variant.” That’s not the answer we need. We don’t just need to know if the tests detect the variant; we need to know whether they distinguish it from other variants. When you say a test detects a variant, you’re not making it clear that it can discriminate. Maybe the old tests tell us coronavirus is present, without saying which kind.

It’s safe to draw a few conclusions. It’s clear the public has no way of knowing where Omicron really is, how many cases there are, and how bad the symptoms are. Science doesn’t know these things yet, so neither do we.

Nothing much is happening in Zambia with any strain of coronavirus. The country is a car ride away from South Africa, but Zambia’s daily case count runs around 1/100 of Florida’s, for about the same population.

The Bible says that if God’s people will pray and repent, he will heal their land. I keep saying I think this is why Christian Africa is doing so well. Their leaders–political leaders, not just preachers–called for prayer. Joe Biden would sooner let Sean Hannity give him a polygraph than tell Americans to pray, especially in the name of Jesus Christ. It will never happen. It would be political suicide. The Democratic Party is firmly against Jesus.

I agree with preachers who say Christians ruined America. I tend to get angry at non-Christians who abuse and slander us. They have taken over our country, and they have made public life disgusting in many places. Still, as I have said before, the primary responsibility is ours. God says he will heal nations if his people pray, not if every citizen prays. We’re not doing it. Even our church leaders aren’t calling for prayer. They refuse to say sin caused the pandemic, which is unquestionably true. They’re terrified of becoming less popular and losing income and power.

We’re not confessing that we caused the pandemic, and we are not repenting and praying as a body. We have been failing in the areas of confession, repentance, and prayer for decades. That’s how we got here.

The church is weak and blind. When people consider coming to us for guidance, what do they see? Christians who can’t prophesy and tell them what their problems are. Christians who can’t heal their diseases or rid them of their sexual aberrations. Christians whose prayers for them don’t produce results. They also see Christians who are more interested in arguing with them and criticizing them than helping them meet God.

We ended up with a homosexuality epidemic because Christians couldn’t help homosexuals change. They couldn’t cast out the spirits involved. There was a time when everyone realized homosexuality was sick and destructive, and people who were suffering from it wanted relief, but we couldn’t do anything for them. No wonder they decided their affliction was natural and normal and that we were the problem. We definitely weren’t the answer.

We ended up with racial and class friction because our churches didn’t connect people with the Holy Spirit, who takes people of different races, nationalities, classes, and religious backgrounds and turns them into brothers and sisters.

I feel I got a revelation about my own relatively inconsequential problems. God told me something I knew already, and it applies to all Christians. We should be harder on phony Christians than we are on people who don’t know God at all. We fall into the trap of focusing on the unpleasant things nonbelievers are doing to us, and we behave as though they’re the big problem. They’re not. We cause our own problems by failing to submit to God. Hostile nonbelievers wouldn’t be able to touch us if we were truly transformed by the Holy Spirit.

We are our own worst enemies, literally, and after that come antagonistic spirits. Human beings are farther down the list. God once told me all my problems were caused by lack of prayer. He didn’t say “heathens.” He didn’t even say “Satan.” He didn’t blame my dysfunctional upbringing in a house of abuse and despair. Lack of prayer was number one. Since I chose not to pray enough, saying lack of prayer caused all my problems implied I caused them myself.

I have to quit letting my annoyance with people who hate Jesus and Christians divert my attention and move me to misplace blame. I have to stop saying things unnecessarily that will drive nonbelievers farther away.

I should be critiquing myself and making a point of laying into horrible, toxic clergymen. People who lie about doctrine and make up testimony in order to get rich need to be exposed. They know exactly what they’re doing, so they don’t deserve patience or mercy. Christians should be telling other people Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, and the other usual suspects are crooks.

I believe God is showing me that the reason I still have nagging sins I sometimes fall into is that I am overly critical of people who are no worse than I am. My failures are intended to remind me that I didn’t save myself. I was contemptible and determined to hold onto my faults. I would have been happy to sink farther into sin, die in blindness, and go to hell had God not intervened and fought with me.

I am too hard on people who don’t know God at all, and I am not hard enough on liars who pretend to know him in order to bleed those who come to them for help.

I believe these things are correct, so I will try to change my behavior. I think this will bring me breakthroughs and make me more useful in helping others. We shall see.

I’m sure I will fail a lot, but my course is more important than my location. Falling isn’t a big deal as long as you continue moving in the right direction when you get up.