Trumpsters Are Already Revolting Against COVID Contact

Tracing

The latest villain is the one that health officials say is integral to

stopping the reemergence of the disease.

Will Sommer

Published May. 25, 2020 4:38 AM ET

"Donald Trump’s allies in conservative media have a new villain in the coronavirus fight: contact tracing, the rigorous efforts to track the virus’s spread that public health experts say is essential to safely restarting society.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham devoted much of her show Thursday night to raising questions about contact tracing, the process where interviewers try to figure out who has been exposed to the virus by literally figuring out whom the infected had contact with. As a Fox News chyron warned that contact tracing should “concern all Americans,” Ingraham claimed that calls for more contact tracers were just an “excuse” to keep businesses closed, and compared being interviewed by a contact tracer to being groped by a Transportation Security Administration agent.

“Instead of rummaging through your luggage, these contact tracers will be prying through the most intimate details of your life,” Ingraham said.

A wide range of public health officials and experts have insisted that the country needs to vastly expand contact tracing, with one Johns Hopkins study calling for the hiring of at least 100,000 additional contact tracers. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said earlier this month that coronavirus deaths will “of course” increase without additional tracing and testing. Workplace contact tracing is included in the White House’s own reopening plan. "

More at link:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumpsters-are-already-revolting-against-covid-contact-tracing

Thinking about QAnon: Joe Carter sends strong warning to

evangelicals about new heresy

May 24, 2020

Terry Mattingly

"This weekend’s think piece is, the final piece of a kind of evangelical-QAnon trilogy, in the wake of the must-read — even if you disagree with parts of it — “Shadowlands” package at The Atlantic Monthly.

By the way, I wonder if anyone in management at the Atlantic realized the religious implications that the term “Shadowlands” would have for millions of C.S. Lewis readers. That’s the first thing I thought of when I saw the title. Just saying.

Early this week, I wrote a post about the “The Prophecies of Q” piece of the package and followed up with this week’s “Crossroads” podcast and post. In both, I argued that the Atlantic piece was essential reading — especially in terms of politics and technology. The religion angle — with QAnon as an essentially “evangelical” subculture — wasn’t as solid, in part because of next to zero input from evangelical leaders, including mainstream evangelical leaders, academics and writers who view QAnon as a dangerous heresy that catching on with some grassroots evangelicals. Thus, I argued:"

more at link:

https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2020/5/21/thinking-about-qanon-joe-carter-sends-strong-warning-to-evangelicals-about-this-heresy