Differences of opinion are to be expected. After all, the Coronavirus is new and the state of our knowledge is continually changing.

63 PERCENT OF RELIGIOUS AMERICANS SAY CORONAVIRUS IS A SIGN FROM GOD TELLING HUMANITY TO CHANGE ITS WAYS: POLL
BY MATTHEW IMPELLI

xty-three percent of religious Americans say that the novel coronavirus pandemic is a sign from God, telling humanity to change its ways of living, according a new poll.

The poll, which was conducted by the Associated Press/NORC, surveyed 1,002 U.S. adults who say they believe in God. The poll was conducted from April 30 to May 4 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage point.

Among the 63 percent, 31 percent said they feel strongly that the coronavirus is a sign from God while the same percentage felt "somewhat strongly." According to the poll, 'born-again' Protestants were most likely to feel that the coronavirus was a sign from God, with 43 percent feeling strongly, while 28 percent of both "mainline Protestants," and Catholics felt the same.

When the poll focused on different races, it found that 73 percent of black Americans and 65 percent of Hispanic Americans felt that the virus was a sign from God, while 48 percent of white Americans said the same.

Additionally, the poll also that a majority of religious Americans, 55 percent, believe that God will protect them from being infected with the coronavirus, while 9 percent said they think God has abandoned humanity.

While a large number of religious Americans believe the virus is a sign from God, the poll found that this same group has decreased some of their religious activities. According to the poll, 38 percent of religious Americans said ...

MORE>

it's a sign from God to stop worshipping false idols.

But which god(s)?

Clearly the Flying Spaghetti Monster - anyone worshiping any other god is doomed to spend eternity in a vat of boiling pasta sauce.

With or without a spoon?

With a fork. What else?

Eating a liquid with a fork is hell for sure.

Let all the evangelical churches open to mass gatherings.

Darwin would approve except that they'll endanger everyone they come in contact with after leaving the services. And that includes children who have no say as to whether or not they attend.

But, but…. the gods?????????????????????

The gods???

Since he can't do anything about the actual number of deaths, the next best thing is to redefine things.

"... the administration's reaction to this emerging state of affairs, wherein the United States has more than double the next nation's deaths and is careening towards 20 percent unemployment, is to fudge the numbers...

Prevent Deaths? The Trump Administration Will Just Try to Erase Them.
The Trump administration’s reported attempt to fudge death numbers is a heinous act—and also a self-destructive one.
JACK HOLMES

Germany is restarting its soccer league on Saturday, albeit without fans in attendance. Its businesses have reopened, and 75 percent of them never closed. That country of 83 million people has had fewer than 8,000 deaths due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. South Korea, population 51 million, had its first case the same day the United States did on January 21. It's had 10,000 cases and 259 deaths. These countries are smaller than the U.S., and South Korea has experience with outbreaks of respiratory disease, but these are not totalitarian states with some built-in capability to respond to a pandemic more decisively than we have. They are liberal democracies that simply did a better job. They've experienced setbacks, but the gap in performance is titanic.

Here in the world's most exceptional nation, we've had 1.4 million cases and 83,000 deaths. As Alexander Nazaryan put it on Twitter, we have 4.2 percent of the world's population but 28 percent of the world's reported fatalities. This is simply a terrible record, a dismal national failure. It is another stain on the fabric of America, and it is growing by the day. Many states are beginning to reopen without adequate testing in place to contain potential outbreaks. The federal government did not use the two months the vast majority of us have sat at home to ramp up our testing capacity to requisite levels, which has been key to both Germany and South Korea's success. Some states are reopening while their case numbers are still growing. And all the while, the federal government has failed to adequately respond to the economic dimension of this, too, as Congress and the Fed look out for the same people they always look out for.

But while Democrats have so far failed to win—or even fight—many battles on behalf of working people, and you can't expect much of anything from their Republican colleagues in Congress, it's hard to look beyond the Executive Branch here. The president may maintain that the buck stops that-a-way—"I don't take responsibility at all."—but the rest of us are not obligated to stomach this crap. They played down the threat, they failed to act, and it cost American lives and livelihoods.

This has gotten so obvious that Donald J. Trump, whom the nation saw fit to make the president through a quirk of our electoral system three years ago, has turned to the most desperate Distraction Objects in an attempt to change the subject. (If you spend more than 15 seconds pondering "Obamagate" when the president himself will basically tell you it's not real, I'm not sure what to tell you.) It has gotten so unequivocal that a reporter from The New York Times—that bastion of obsessive Objectivism—feels free to jump on CNN and rightfully call for the resignation of the head of the Centers for Disease Control. In the process, Donald G. McNeil, Jr. laid out a frankly damning timeline.

We should be calling for these people's resignations more frequently. The president should be continually asked to resign on the basis of gross incompetence. He doesn't read his briefing reports, he rarely attends meetings of his pandemic task force. He doesn't know what's going on in the world. He doesn't care. All that matters is ...

MORE>

Speaking of "weird" numbers

State and Federal Data on COVID-19 Testing Don’t Match Up
The CDC has quietly started releasing nationwide numbers. But they contradict what states themselves are reporting.
ROBINSON MEYER & ALEXIS C. MADRIGAL

How many coronavirus tests have been conducted in the United States? For the first time since February, the federal government has an answer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now say that 10,847,778 coronavirus tests have been conducted nationwide. These tests have found about 1.4 million positive cases.

These figures come from a new CDC website that appeared online last week with little fanfare. It marks an important but much belated development for the nation’s premier public-health agency, which has struggled to manage a pandemic that has killed more than 81,000 Americans and plunged the U.S. economy into a recession. Not since February 29, when the nationwide death toll stood at five, has the CDC published anything close to a comprehensive daily count of tests.

For the past 11 weeks, the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic has been the country’s only reliable source for national testing data. (The tracker compiles the number of tests reported by each U.S. state and territory daily.) While the CDC has provided only occasional and rudimentary tallies of total tests, data from the COVID Tracking Project have been used by Johns Hopkins University, governors and members of Congress, and the White House.

With the new CDC site, the federal government is providing regular testing data again, and for the first time ever, it is doing so on a state-by-state level. But an initial analysis of the CDC’s state-level data finds major discrepancies between what many states are reporting and what the federal government is reporting about them. In Florida, for example, the disparity is enormous. The state government reported on Friday that about 700,000 coronavirus tests have been conducted statewide since the beginning of the outbreak. This count should be authoritative: Governor Ron DeSantis has ordered hospitals and doctors to report their test results to the Florida Department of Health. Yet the CDC reported more than 919,000 tests in the state in that same period. That’s 31 percent more tests than Florida itself seems to think it has conducted. (Because the CDC says it does not update its data on the weekends, we have, throughout this article, compared its figures against the numbers reported by each state on Friday.) When we asked the CDC to explain the discrepancy in Florida, the agency declined to comment on the record.

“If this is what they’re getting, the CDC should pick up the phone and call the state of Florida and say, ‘What’s happening?’” Ashish Jha, the K.T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard, told us.

Given the complexity and the multisource nature of the data, some variations should certainly be anticipated. But the inconsistencies we found suggest ...

MORE>

THE ONE THEY BELIEVE IN.

86% of choir members got infected with COVID-19 after church practice: report
By Leonardo Blair

A new report from the Skagit County Public Health Department in Washington state published by the CDC Friday, shows how quickly the coronavirus spread after a choir practice became a “superspreader event” for the disease that infected 86% of attending members and killed two of them.

Now state health officials say the findings in the report, based on the experience of Skagit Valley Chorale that normally rehearses at the Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church on Tuesday evenings and once a month on a Saturday morning, could have significant implications for future church gatherings.

"It's really important that people realize that by meeting, by gathering, 86% of them could become ill and the results and aftermath of that is hard to fathom," Skagit County Health Officer Dr. Howard Leibrand said in a King 5 report.

The report from the health department showed how ...

MORE>

Thoughts and prayers didn't work.

First thing you have to understand is that prayer is not an act of faith.



The second thing is how effective it is



But let's pretend for a moment that "God" exists and he answers prayers. Looks like he does a seriously crappy job of deciding what prayers to answer



But Tracie says it best

Never let it be said that Donnie doesn't take care of his friends

Trump vaccine czar makes $3.4M windfall as firm reports progress on coronavirus shot and stock soars
By DAVE GOLDINER

A controversial biotech firm is claiming early positive progress on its trial of a coranavirus vaccine — giving a massive financial boost to President Trump’s newly minted vaccine czar.

The report sent Moderna stock soaring by up to 34% in pre-market trading Monday. It was trading up a more modest 22% by midmorning.

The stock spike temporarily added at least $3.4 million to the bottom line of Moncef Slaoui, the just-named vaccine czar who was on the board of Moderna until his appointment.

Slaoui, a veteran Big Pharma exec, holds ...

MORE>

So... just to be sure I understand...
He's said that he doesn't have the virus...
But he's taking an unproven drug ... for weeks... to cure something he... doesn't have?

Trump ridiculed after announcing he’s been taking hydroxychloroquine for weeks
Sarah K. Burris

President Donald Trump announced Monday that he’s been taking hydroxychloroquine recreationally for weeks. It’s something doctors have urged people not to take without being on a heart monitor so they could watch in case the person’s heart rate became irregular.

It was an admission that prompted many to break into hysterics with questions and comments about Trump’s casual drug use amid a pandemic.

When he advocated for hydroxychloroquine, the country quickly saw a run on the drug where one couple took an aquarium cleaner because it had a toxic version of hydroxychloroquine in the substance. The husband died and his wife warned people not to listen to anything Trump says.

You can see the ridicule of Trump in the tweets below:





More tweets at source ...

MORE>

I'm an atheist. God(s) are irrelevant.

But the belief in them isn't.

Neither is belief in Santa Claus but most folks outgrow it.