Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Misinformation & religion during Covid



I first heard ideas about Covid-19 that seemed clearly wrong from from my Salvadoran friends in Santa Ana and Irvine, who used to babysit my children when they were young. 

Alicia sent me a video made by two doctors in Bakersfield. My husband told me that Twitter is full of people refuting these two doctors and their claims.

Jenny told me that Covid-19 was made in a laboratory.  Her proof: unlike other viruses, this one can flourish both in summer and in winter.  Newspapers and cable sources I watch, however, are all reporting that the virus came either from a meat market or from accidental release of a naturally occurring virus being studied in a lab in Wuhan.  For example, I heard this report on National Public Radio: "Genomic Study Points to Natural Origin of Covid-19."

Jenny also said that vaccines are really just a way for the government to control us by injecting a chip in people.  I was shocked that she would be opposed to vaccines and would see the pandemic as a means of government control, but my husband pointed me to articles saying that some governments are using methods of following people's locations so that those who violate social isolation can be controlled.  Not only cell phone locations, thumb prints and biometric ID of people's irises are being used to identify people; researchers have actually tested implanting microchips with ID numbers in humans.

She said that the reported deaths from the Covid virus were inflated and cited a video that had been on Facebook but was removed. 

"Every case of someone who dies, they have to say it was a Covid," she said to me on May 5.  A report being removed or "soon to be removed" was to her proof of the government trying to conceal the truth.  She also said the government was paying hospitals to label deaths as caused by the virus--another half-truth related to funding to fight Covid-19.

I was shocked that Jenny would not believe the totals of Covid-related deaths being reported.  If anything, those totals were under-reported, according to MSNBC and the New York Times.  

My friends said their sources were 
  • pastors,
  • doctors who were friends of pastors,
  • Facebook, and
  • an evangelist who visited their church, who was in Vietnam when the pandemic started.
But a week later I read reports of a state senator from Minnesota challenging whether the numbers of Americans dead from Covid-19 had been inflated.

State Senator Scott Jensen questioned the federal guidelines for attributing deaths to Covid-19 as early as April 20.

His words were picked up and broadcast by Fox News and others:

InfoWars, a conspiracy news site that recently claimed that the coronavirus is a man-made bioweapon meant to stoke panic, also linked to Jensen's interview and ended a post with Jensen's quote: "Well, fear is a great way to control people, and I worry about that."

"They're trying to make people have fear, to take away our rights," Jenny said.  "It's a way to control people."  

From the state senator to Fox News and Facebook to my friend Jenny in ten days or less.  Or perhaps one could trace the chain of transmission back to another source.

Facebook has been the major spreader of misinformation for years, according to a Forbes report on March 21 of a study published in Nature: Human Behavior.

And Facebook's monitors miss 70% of the misinformation in Spanish as opposed to 29% of the misinformation in English.  FB puts a warning label on content that it identifies as not true.

Vox.com reported research that viewers of misinformation from one Fox News host had higher rates of infection and death from Covid-19 than the general public.

Jenny had some excellent arguments, however.  "It's okay for us to go to work for 8 hours or more, but we can't go to church for 2-3 hours?  This doesn't make sense at all."

Two of her sisters are pastors of their own small congregations in Santa Ana.  They continue to keep their churches open for worship, prayer, and singing two days a week.  People need prayer and connection to get through this epidemic.  Part of the church's job is just feeding people, making sure that those in their congregations have enough food.

Many people in their churches are "essential workers" of some kind.  Even for those who are not, their income is necessary to pay rent and buy food.  They bear the brunt of the crisis, unlike those who can afford to stay home or to work from home.

Meanwhile, some Christians who have more financial security and who are appalled by our president read articles like this one titled "Is the radical right spreading the coronavirus?"  Some fear for their lives if they have to venture out among people in crowded grocery aisles not wearing masks.

They worry that conservative evangelical Christians are among those spreading misinformation.

Meanwhile, people write long Twitter threads like this one, fighting over information and misinformation, whether to stay home or reopen.

It's hard to know how to be a faithful Christian in this politically charged climate.

We do need to take stands for justice and for truth.  New Testament professor Reta Halteman Finger writes a blog providing guides to studying books of the Bible such as the Book of Revelation.  It's on the website of Christian Feminism Today.

"Revelation is highly political!" she writes.  "Believers are called to choose between the politics of Roman domination or the faithful, nonviolent politics of the slaughtered Lamb."

In a democracy, believers are certainly called to vote.  I hope US Christians will do their part to study the issues and vote the dangerous liar out of the White House this November.  I hope we will take part in debate, supporting candidates, getting out the vote, allowing vote by mail, and preventing Russian interference.

Meanwhile, there are several things we can avoid doing:
  • Don't spread misinformation.  Check your facts and your sources.
  • Don't engage in hysterical hyperbole.  Let your yeas be yeas and your nos be nos.
  • Don't generalize about "evangelicals," "the left," "the media," etc.
  • Don't exaggerate to make a point against the other side.
  • Don't insult people, even those who lie to gain power or stay in power.  That's going to be a hard one for me.
Bottom line: respect each other's humanity.  

 For an update on events in July with this family, see "Praising God, sharing the virus?" (July 9, 2020).




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