COVID-19, Blaming China, and Churches: Two More Thoughts

Two more thoughts about COVID-19.

1. After I read an article here (about Trump blaming China for COVID-19), I posted a comment almost totally reflected below:

A good response to this is to point to other countries that did a better job of responding to COVID-19 than Trump did. They also would have been affected by whatever bad actions China engaged in. Also, there were intelligence reports in Jan. and Feb. about the virus, so even if China was not forthcoming (to be honest I haven't looked at that very much), Trump knew anyway. But there are certainly many countries that did a better job than Trump, with the same or less information about what was happeing in China (they probably didn't have the intelligence reports that Trump had). One country is Israel. For more about that, see this (remember that on Feb. 29th Trump said it was a hoax) and for more see this.

As far as criticizing China for letting people leave the country, at what point did TRUMP ban Americans from leaving this country?

As far as what Trump knew and when he knew it, see this, and this.

UPDATE 10/24/20 An article about an increase in anti-Asian-American racism in connection with COVID-19 is here. 

 UPDATE 2/16/21 A CNN video story about anti-Asian-American racism is here.

2. After reading an article here (about lock-down orders and places of worship), I posted the following comment:

Although I haven't been to Church in roughly 19 years, I have spoken with a senior church employee about coming back (it's complicated, but I have done more than just think vaguely of going to Mass again) and I am a religious person. But I have no problem at all telling places of worship that there are serious limits on what they can do right now for public health reasons. And when they compare the limit on them and the limit on businesses, that at least sort of doesn't make sense. A lot of the businesses letting more than 10 people in at a time are much larger than the average church. Some, maybe a lot of, businesses DO limit how many people can come in, and I'm fine with that. And going to a place of worship is not essential. A lot of people live where there is no place of worship for them, and they worship at home. We have fire department regulations about occupancy for public safety. I'm not sure if anyone was asked to leave or was denied entry, but I have been at City Council meetings where fire-fighters have kept an eye on occupancy numbers, and we certainly have a right to attend city council meetings.