Freedom to be stupid
In Union county, Oregon, they went from 22 Covid-19 cases last week to 224 this week. this in a rural, low population area.
It appears that the increase is mostly due to *one* church there. Even though the county was in phase 1, which means no large gatherings they had a service with several hundred people in attendance. There was a video of it up on their website (which has since vanished, but people saved copies)
Said video shows nothing remotely resembling social distancing. Doesn't show any masks either.
I'm sure they felt they were exercising their rights. Freedom of religion (which hasn't actually been restricted), freedom of assembly (which *has* been restricted and quite *legally* restricted)
What they actually did was exercise their right to be stupid. And exercise the *non*-right of endangering other people.
Oh yeah, about that freedom of religion bit. It'd only be a restriction on that if church gatherings were restricted aand other types weren't.
Since *all* gathering above a certain size are restricted there is *no* religious component to the restrictions.
the protests that it is infringing their freedom of religion are just another case of people thinking that their religion (almost always Christianity in the US) is somehow "special" and deserves to be exempt from the rules.
Sorry doesn't work that way.
And I trust the jump in cases demonstrates the idiocy of "god will protect us".
We've got free will. And that means god *has* to let us suffer the consequences of making bad choices. This entry was originally posted at https://kengr.dreamwidth.org/1117827.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
It appears that the increase is mostly due to *one* church there. Even though the county was in phase 1, which means no large gatherings they had a service with several hundred people in attendance. There was a video of it up on their website (which has since vanished, but people saved copies)
Said video shows nothing remotely resembling social distancing. Doesn't show any masks either.
I'm sure they felt they were exercising their rights. Freedom of religion (which hasn't actually been restricted), freedom of assembly (which *has* been restricted and quite *legally* restricted)
What they actually did was exercise their right to be stupid. And exercise the *non*-right of endangering other people.
Oh yeah, about that freedom of religion bit. It'd only be a restriction on that if church gatherings were restricted aand other types weren't.
Since *all* gathering above a certain size are restricted there is *no* religious component to the restrictions.
the protests that it is infringing their freedom of religion are just another case of people thinking that their religion (almost always Christianity in the US) is somehow "special" and deserves to be exempt from the rules.
Sorry doesn't work that way.
And I trust the jump in cases demonstrates the idiocy of "god will protect us".
We've got free will. And that means god *has* to let us suffer the consequences of making bad choices. This entry was originally posted at https://kengr.dreamwidth.org/1117827.html. Please comment there using OpenID.