So, full disclosure: I get viscerally mad when I see people without masks. I work in healthcare. In fact, I work at a hospital that has been hit particularly hard by the COVID-19. I’ve been present for multiple deaths from the virus. I’ve seen people as young as their early teens die from this thing. I’ve cared for grieving family members over the phone because they were too sick to come to the hospital and be there with their loved ones. COVID-19 is an undiscriminating killer, and it must be taken seriously. As such, when people talk about “my choice” or “it’s not that big a deal” or “not living in fear,” I get mad. Really mad. I understand that you haven’t seen what I’ve seen, that you don’t fully grasp what this virus does, but I’m still mad— especially when people of faith talk this way.
That being said, I’m also not surprised.
I grew up in white Evangelicalism and worked in those circles in early adulthood, and looking back, the part that always frustrates me is the strident individualism. Stated Evangelical belief focuses almost exclusively on “personal relationship with God,” and any form of community membership or devotional practice is secondary. As such, I experienced a lot of anxiety in my Evangelical church growing up since the only rubric for faith was something deeply personal and hopelessly subjective. After all, my confidence in my eternal fate rested entirely on whether I “felt saved,” and for a teenager with typical all-over-the-place teenage feelings, that was terrifying, and I know I’m not the only one who felt that way. (In fact, later on, as a youth pastor, I tried to bring many teens relief when they struggled with that same anxiety, but when I did this, I always knew I was working against the Evangelical dogma, not with it.) The Evangelicalism I experienced relied on community pressure and yet resisted community. Growing up, I’m not sure we even understood why we gathered in community since everything boiled down to this highly individual take. I remember feeling so free when a presenter at a conference pointed out, “The ‘you’ in Paul’s letters is almost always plural. The Bible isn’t just written to ‘you’; it’s written to ‘y’all.'” In retrospect, I should have guessed at this given the context of the New Testament, but this idea had been completely absent from my church experience to that point.
Yeah, I got out of that. I’m still a Christian. I just prioritize community and companionship and tradition and two millennia of interpretation by people smarter than myself. The personal dimension of my faith is still important to me, but it’s only one dimension, and thinking of faith this way is so much more peaceful and reassuring and sustainable than the version of Christianity I grew up around and worked in.
Fast forward a decade and a half, and I’m seeing a lot of highly-publicized unmasked white Evangelical gatherings (most notably those coordinated by Sean Feucht of Bethel Church). While the stated purpose is “worship,” the clearer message is asserting individual rights and disdaining communal safety. I get that many observing this behavior by Christians may be baffled. How can a group of people who talk so much about “love” do something so reckless and dangerous to their fellow human beings? Well, remember that the core value of Evangelicalism is not love; it’s individualism. If everything boils down to individual relationship with God, if individual relationship trumps communal responsibility, then gatherings like these are a natural byproduct. These Evangelicals, when asked to refrain from gathering, have interpreted the request as a challenge to individual faith and slapped the label of “persecution” on it. In reality, we’re all being asked to think of one another’s safety and be responsible, but a people conditioned only for individualism can’t understand that.
I suspect this is true beyond the Evangelical world too— that if you were to ask the average anti-masker why they refuse to mask up, the answer would come down to their rights. There are a lot of rifts in American culture right now between liberal and conservative, black and white, LGBTQ and homophobic, but one I wish we would talk about more often is this rift between communal and individual. It’s literally costing lives.
Do you look at this issue differently now, after knowing about all of the lies and misinformation about masks and vaccines being safe?
Masks and vaccines are perfectly safe. At this point, arguing anything else is denial of reality.
Covid “vaccine” injuries and deaths are on the rise. And mandating an untested “vaccine” was not the best way to fight a virus with an extremely high recovery rate. As Christians, we have a duty to the truth, even when it goes against our narrative. You are misleading people if you are saying the COVID mRNA vaccines are safe and effective. Use your discernment.
Look, the conspiracy theory schtick is cute, but here’s the thing: I worked on a COVID unit in a national hotspot. I saw the death toll of that “high recovery rate” virus with my own eyes. The vaccine saved countless lives, and no quotation marks are needed because mRNA vaccines are the result of decades of research deployed at the right time. My “duty to the truth” is fulfilled; you are the one who has been misled.
I worked in a hospital through the COVID pandemic as well. It turns out that COVID didn’t kill indiscriminately. The security supervisor who carted out the bodies of those who died during covid, told me he doesn’t wasn’t seeing anyone less than 300 pounds. Those dying WITH COVID, were actually dying from their multiple comorbidities. They were the obese, the diabetic, the unhealthy. And they actually finally realized that they made a huge mistake at the beginning, by putting people on ventilators. The ventilators were actually killing patients! And the worst part about the untested COVID mRNA vaccines turns out to be the long term effects. Major heart issues in young, healthy individuals. The very individuals with strong immune systems who didn’t need a vaccine even if the vaccine worked. If you’re not too stuck in your beliefs, and are open, I suggest you look into #diedsuddenly. It will open your eyes. And btw, conspiracy theories aren’t cute, when they turn out to be true. I pray you will open your eyes and use discernment in this issue. Please, for the truth, look into these recent mRNA vaccines. They’re neither safe nor effective. And you’re putting out the wrong message. It’s a message causing fear and anxiety. And you can stop wearing that damn face diaper if you’re still wearing one everywhere.
Look, I’m not expecting to convince an anonymous commenter who’s clearly pretty deep in the conspiracy rabbit hole. You’ve given an anecdote from a security supervisor (not a medical professional) and pointed me to a hashtag (which inherently will collect tweets and stories you already know you’ll agree with). That’s not data. It’s just a great example of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy at work, and if you’re not familiar with that term, I’d recommend googling it since it’s highly common in a lot of the “COVID truther” theories. Let me present a counter theory:
I’m writing in an American context, so I’m going to assume you are as well, dear Someone. Americans as a culture are uniquely bad at dealing with death and comprehending our own mortality. Any political conversation about healthcare quickly reveals this. In the wake of the most massive swath of death in our lifetimes, many of us looked for some sort of way to say “well, it couldn’t happen to me.” We yearn to prove ourselves as the exceptions because we can’t handle the possibility of our own deaths being so unpredictable. That’s what I see in your argument: a search for a pattern that probably isn’t really there. Please know I won’t judge you for feeling that way. You’re human, and it’s a natural response to unfathomable tragedy. It’s also rooted in deep anxiety though, so I wonder if you’re telling on yourself a little by trying to pin “fear and anxiety” on my message here instead of admitting that the conspiracy theories you’ve been researching absolutely drip with it.
Regarding my “face diaper”, transmission rates are low in my area right now (my wife, who I consider a trusted source, tracks this data as part of her work). I’m not masking in public at the moment because of these low rates, but if rates went up, I’d happily mask up again to protect my family and neighbors. I still wear a mask in patient rooms because I have a small child and another family member who travels for work, and this combination means I’m usually carrying some kind of cough or cold. COVID may be down in my area, but RSV and Flu are currently spiking, and I care about my patients, many of whom are highly vulnerable due to their health conditions. That ain’t anxiety, Someone. That’s basic human compassion. And candidly, I’m pretty anxious about a lot of things; this particular issue isn’t one of them though.
Now, again, I don’t expect to convince you, but I hope where I’m coming from is clear: I’m trying to make the most compassionate decisions I can based on the data I have available— data which comes from health systems I trust, not a hashtag and anecdotes. This isn’t even about keeping myself safe; it’s about keeping my community safe (which was the purpose of the original post). Those people with heart issues and obesity and diabetes you mentioned earlier— are they not worth protecting to you?
Maybe talking further would be a waste of both of our times (since you seem quite beyond convincing, and I’m not really swayed by what you’ve presented), but I hope I’ve at least planted a seed here about conspiracy theories or persuaded some others who might be reading. If you’ve bothered to read this all the way to the end, thanks for your time.