Five years ago on this day, President Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office with a message. “…This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history. I am confident that by counting and continuing to take these tough measures, we will significantly reduce the threat to our citizens, and we will ultimately and expeditiously defeat this virus…
“At the very start of the outbreak, we instituted sweeping travel restrictions on China and put in place the first federally mandated quarantine in over 50 years…After consulting with our top government health professionals, I have decided to take several strong but necessary actions to protect the health and wellbeing of all Americans.
“To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days. The new rules will go into effect Friday at midnight. These restrictions will be adjusted subject to conditions on the ground…”1
As of February 17, 2025, there have been 777.3 million cases of diagnosed COVID throughout the world and just over 7 million deaths. While that sounds like a lot of deaths – and it is – that is only .9% of the cases resulting in death.2 The percentage of deaths as a result of the modern flu are roughly the same.
Compare this to pneumonia. Each year in the United States, 1.5 million Americans contract pneumonia, 1 million are hospitalized, and 50,000 die. That figures out to 3.3% of pneumonia cases ending in death.3
Draconian measures were implemented to combat COVID while people with the flu or pneumonia are often sent home with an antibiotic and told they are just going to have to tough it out. It seems that we get things backwards in our world.
“Smoking causes about 20% of all cancers and about 30% of all cancer deaths in the United States. About 80% of lung cancers (and about 80% of all lung cancer deaths) are due to smoking. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in people in the United States.”4 This is combated with a warning label in small print on the side of the nicotine products. Sales of the products have not stopped.
New cancer diagnoses are projected to be over 2 million this year5 and there will be
610,000 cancer-related deaths.6 Do the math on this one! A staggering 30.5% cancer patients die of cancer. That means 186,050 of the 610,000 cancer deaths are caused by smoking and nicotine products. Wouldn’t you think that someone would step up to the plate and ban nicotine products entirely?
Illogical hypocrisy really gets under my skin! It’s backwards behavior and beliefs. We get so many things backwards in our nation. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” This backwards behavior has been going on for a very long time.
Christians in America have been vilified with some equating us to fundamentalist Islam and terror cells. Those who silently walk in front of abortion clinics, praying, and being willing to talk with young mothers are sent to jail while murdering abortionists collect their money at the end of the day and go home.
“Rusty Trubey, a veteran chaplain at the Coatesville V.A. Medical Center, came under fire after he “felt that God was leading him to preach a two-part sermon series on the first chapter of Romans.”
“Trubey preached the second installment of the series, entitled “When a Culture Excludes God,” in June and read Romans 1:23–32…After the sermon, an onsite V.A. police officer approached Trubey and informed him there were complaints about the content.
“Trubey notified his supervisor, who said that Romans 1 was a “very charged and divisive text,” and requested notes from the message. She specifically asked him to “write out any extemporaneous lines that [he] might have said that others might have found offensive.”
“The chaplain complied with his supervisor’s request but found that he had been relieved of his duty of offering patient care services to individuals at the V.A. and assigned to logistics while they investigated him for the sermon.”7
In the past five years, we’ve learned that many of the measures to combat COVID were either fabricated lies or ineffective attempts to curb the virus. The overreaction to COVID stripped away some of our fundamental rights. Churches were closed while bars and brothels remained open. That’s backwards in so many ways!
Worse, though, are the atrocities that go against the Word of God, that call God’s Word and teachings evil and the hedonistic pleasures of man good. We shouldn’t be surprised when it happens. Take heart, dear Christian, when it happens because the Lord said it would and He tells us why.
John 16:1-3 says, “These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. (2) They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. (3) And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.”
1https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-address-nation/
2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_by_country
3https://www.verywellhealth.com/pneumonia-facts-and-statistics-5498569
4https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/tobacco/health-risks-of-smoking-tobacco.html
5https://www.medpagetoday.com/hematologyoncology/othercancers/113796
6https://www.webmd.com/cancer/how-many-cancer-deaths-per-year
7https://cbn.com/news/us/veterans-chaplain-censored-biblical-sermon-asks-new-va-secretary-intervene
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