This approach to #COVIDー19 is profoundly cruel and merciless, and as a Christian man I feel compelled to say so. Here's why. 1/? https://twitter.com/kathrynlopez/status/1278824048257097737

I know a woman who is ruined by the lockdown. Ruined.
She lost her physical therapy & her Parkinson's severely worsened. Soon the medication needed as a result left her so not herself she called the cops in terror one night: she thought her husband was a stranger in her bed. 2/?

She is totally debilitated now, and just yesterday she fell and broke her hip. She was fine before #COVID measures. Last time I saw her was at a Christmas party! Now, as far as I hear, she is not long for this world. Dead. 3/?

This week, a bartender told me her mother's latest tests just came back. Cancer. It looks very bad. She said her mother missed several treatments due to lockdown restrictions. 4/?

Dear friend just had a baby. When her baby developed a cough, her pediatrician refused to see it. Covid protocols. So my friend had to take her newborn to crowded urgent care. Friend had heart surgery early this year, and is one of the few who WANTS to be careful/quarantined. 5/?

I recently attended the funeral of a man who DIED of cancer after covid lockdown measures a) kept him from screenings, b) delayed all his meetings and treatment options after diagnosis. 6/?

Met a guy at a bar last week. One of thousands of locals who lost their jobs to lockdown. In a way, this guy's story broke my heart more than any. "I moved in with mom," he said. "She's vulnerable, so I quarantined best I could." He had no food. Fasted. Lost a lot of weight. 7/?

What made me tear up: "I didn't call any of my friends. I had to have SOME man-pride." After weeks of "quarantine," he finally took a drive, just to use his food stamps to pick up a few frozen meals. Got pulled over; his license was expired. Now he has to appear in court. 8/?

He's also now back on drugs again after years clean. Who wouldn't be?
For just one more anecdote, a friend of a friend just committed suicide after lockdown destroyed the business he had poured his whole life into. Does that count for nothing? 9/?

There are countless other examples. As my wife put it to me simply today: "I know far more people hurt by COVID lockdowns than by Covid."
Many Christians could say the same. And that's why the blindspot in the interview I shared at the top of this thread is so egregious. 10/?

It presents compliance with COVID orders as an example of Christian charity, and resistance of those orders as (give me a break, we can read passive-aggressiveness) something less charitable, or even uncharitable.
Again, do these sufferings of our neighbors mean nothing?
11/?

Does it never occur to those promoting compliance with COVID orders that we who resist them are doing so not out of a selfish concern for our own liberty to, say, get haircuts, but out of a charitable concern for our neighbors who are suffering as a result of the orders? 12/?

Finally: Do you never stop to consider the fact that those imposing these orders are, in many cases, outspoken opponents of Christian orthodoxy in every other major moral matter? 13/?

Or do you expect us to believe that Democrat mayors & governors who promote abortion & euthanasia are now moral superiors from whom we could learn something about "life issues" just when they use COVID to enact the most irresistible authoritarian measures of their careers?
14/?

Do you have that much contempt for our intelligence? Do you have that much hatred for us--enough to assume our intentions (alienated as a concern of "some" about losing "their liberties") are more sordidly uncharitable than those of veteran Dem enemies of Catholic teaching? 15/?

If so, this thread serves no purpose for you. It only serves as a warning against you to onlookers. But I hope the sufferings of my neighbors and my sincere intervention on their behalf shakes you, and makes you reconsider your dismissal of both. 16/?

I hope my bluntness here hasn't dulled my point.
On the other hand, I feel confident that the use of Christian language to sugarcoat my neighbors' suffering (& implicitly denounce those who condemn that suffering!) is more bitter and cruel than any sentiment I've expressed.
End.