In 64 AD, the Great Fire of Rome burned down much of the city, including the Circus Maximus. The fire raged for six days. Emperor Nero, reportedly, played away on his violin. Later, he blamed Christians for starting the fires to deflect from his own culpability.
Nearly two-thousand years later, during the Great Coronavirus Panic of 2020, Governors around the country are blaming church-going Christians for spreading the virus, even though there is no empirical data to suggest that people attending church are uniquely susceptible to the virus.
Albeit, anecdotal accounts of churchgoers getting sick do exist and it does happen, which is all the reason Democrats need to point the finger at believers for making the entire society sick. North Carolina’s Democrat Governor, Roy Cooper, blamed church-goers and legislators defending First Amendment rights for the spread of the virus in the Tarheel State.
According to the Carolina Journal, Governor Cooper said at a press conference on Friday, “When people gather together and are around each other for a long time, the evidence is overwhelming that the virus can spread so much more easily.”
He continued, “Unfortunately, this has happened at churches in our state and in our country.”
While there certainly have been outbreaks in churches across the country, they have largely been few and far between. It’s estimated that only 1% of the 7% of churches still meeting have seen any coronavirus among their members, and the number of deaths ranks in the double and not triple or quadruple digits.
The governor’s remarks, blaming Christians for the spread of coronavirus above and beyond any other form of secular interaction is entirely unscientific and unsubstantiated.
Some pushed back and the governor’s Nero-like comments (see below).
