Yes, COVID Is Real, and Yes, It Does Kill People

by Pa Rock
Worshiper of Science

I have a good friend who, on one level, will take a couple of drinks and enjoy life as much as the next person, but on another level regards herself as a conservative Christian who feels the need to parrot the views of the preacher of whatever fundamentalist church she happens to be attending at a particular time.  Other people in our circle of friends tend to show this person the courtesy of not responding when she occasionally lapses into vocal reactionary episodes.

I remember, for example, an awkward silence in the room a few years back when this lady dropped a line into a group conversation to the effect that she could never vote for Obama because he was a socialist.  That from a person who purported to know well the mind  one of the more significant socialists in the history of mankind, Jesus Christ, and to be a follower of his teachings.

But small-time, backwater ministers who tailor their sermons to draw in large numbers of the faithful gullible who inhabit their particular backwaters, had hit on the notion that many of their available worshipers hated Obama - because he was black - and that they historically believed socialists were bad, like communists, though they could not even begin to accurately define either term.   And "Obama is a socialist" played well with the rubes who wandered into their churches in order that they could feel pious and good about themselves.

This week I spoke to my friend on the phone to wish her a Happy New Year.   My friend currently works in an isolated area, and the past few times I have talked to her she has been growing more and more angry at the pandemic  for increasing her sense of isolation - and when I talked to her a couple of days ago, that frustration was boiling over.

My friend, who has a college degree and a professional license, had convinced herself that the pandemic is not real, it is just something concocted by the government as a way of controlling people.  She assured me that she has done "research" and that  the inoculation program is part of the hoax.  I told her that 340,000 dead people indicate, to me at least, that the pandemic is real, but she countered that those are just people who died anyway, and that the government had "labeled" their deaths as COVID.  Some may have had COVID-like symptoms, but they had actually died of well known maladies one pneumonia and flu.  My friend also said that her "research" had shown that there have been no "extra" deaths over the past year, and the death totals are exactly what they would have been expected to be without the pandemic.

My friend said that she was not planning on getting the shot, and I told her that I was anxious to get mine.

By the time our conversation ended, strained, though amicable, I thought that I might be developing symptoms of COVID - my head was certainly hurting!

The last president may have been a "socialist," at least at-heart, but I will take a socialist any day over a "lunatic ignoramus," which is what we have now!

Congressman Matt Gaetz and Senator Marco Rubio are both well known for ignoring COVID basic safety precautions, such as wearing face masks in public - and yet both of these Florida Republicans literally jumped over health care workers and elderly Floridians in order to get their COVID shots early!  And Godfather's Pizza CEO and GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain and Congressman-elect Luke Letlow of Louisiana, another Republican, both chose not to wear masks during their political events, and now both of those men are dead - from COVID!

The government is predicting that there may be as many as 150,000 new deaths from COVID in the next month alone.  Those estimates are based on science - and not on the political posturing of Fox News or the ravings of some cornpone preacher who is trying to fill his pews with the gullible and his coffers with their grocery money.  

COVID is real, and yes, it does kill people!