The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released this statement Friday:
The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has issued the following statement:
We are heartbroken and deeply concerned by the armed conflict now raging. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has members in each of the affected areas and throughout the world. Our minds and hearts have been turned toward them and all our brothers and sisters.
We continue to pray for peace. We know that enduring peace can be found through Jesus Christ. He can calm and comfort our souls even in the midst of terrible conflicts. He taught us to love God and our neighbors.
We pray that this armed conflict will end quickly, that the controversies will end peacefully and that peace will prevail among nations and within our own hearts. We plead with world leaders to seek for such resolutions and peace.
Has anybody else noticed that now that the pandemic is winding down, suddenly there is a new crisis — a bloody war in the Ukraine — that is meant to create panic?
Former Democratic presidential candidate and military veteran Tulsi Gabbard called for a peaceful resolution to the crisis and was met with hundreds of Twitter followers who said things like this:
Meanwhile, those of us with eyes to see and ears to hear should understand that the constant emotional manipulation is part of a pattern. The forces of evil in this world want us to hate each other and to see the world in simple, jingoistic terms. If you are against U.S. military involvement in Ukraine, you must love Putin. If you pray for Putin, you are a traitor. If you promote peace, you must be destroyed.
In this Manichean worldview, you must see Putin as Evil and Ukraine as Good. But as followers of the Prince of Peace, we must avoid being emotionally manipulated on this and every other issue. The truth is that there are many people and forces to blame for the current war in Ukraine, and the history of this conflict is much more complex than the corporate media would have us believe.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced Friday that a universal mask mandate is no longer in place for Church members. The Church is encouraging local LDS leaders to follow guidance from “local health and government officials and local customs and conditions.”
When leaders of my church first began encouraging mask use in the second half of 2020, there were literally dozens of LDS intellectuals claiming the mandate was for health reasons. I heartily disagreed and pointed to the many years of studies indicating that almost all masks are useless against viruses. The science has not changed: almost all masks are as useful in stopping a virus as a chain link fence is in keeping out mosquitoes.
The mask mandates were never about health, and I don’t believe Church leaders ever believed the mandates were about health. The mandates were about government control and offering a frightened populace some symbol that governments were “doing something” about SARS-CoV2. It is worth pointing out that hundreds of individual stakes, including mine, told members they did not have to wear masks before the February 18 announcement from the First Presidency, so if the FP announcement imposing masks was a commandment of some kind, why did these stake presidencies commit apostasy?
Over the months I have linked to dozens of studies on masks showing that masks do not stop viruses.
A response to people who use the classic fallacious argument, “Well, if masks don’t work, then why do surgeons wear them?”
I’m a surgeon who has performed more than 10,000 surgical procedures wearing a surgical mask. However, that fact alone doesn’t really qualify me as an expert on the matter. More importantly, I am a former editor of a medical journal.
I know how to read the medical literature, distinguish good science from bad, and fact from fiction. Believe me, the medical literature is filled with bad fiction masquerading as medical science. It is very easy to be deceived by bad science.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve read hundreds of studies on the science of medical masks. Based on extensive review and analysis, there is no question in my mind that healthy people should not be wearing surgical or cloth masks. Nor should we be recommending universal masking of all members of the population. That recommendation is not supported by the highest level of scientific evidence.
First, let’s be clear. The premise that surgeons wearing masks serves as evidence that “masks must work to prevent viral transmission” is a logical fallacy that I would classify as an argument of false equivalence, or comparing “apples to oranges.”
Although surgeons do wear masks to prevent their respiratory droplets from contaminating the surgical field and the exposed internal tissues of our surgical patients, that is about as far as the analogy extends. Obviously, surgeons cannot “socially distance” from their surgical patients (unless we use robotic surgical devices, in which case, I would definitely not wear a mask).
The CoVID-19 pandemic is about viral transmission. Surgical and cloth masks do nothing to prevent viral transmission. We should all realize by now that face masks have never been shown to prevent or protect against viral transmission. Which is exactly why they have never been recommended for use during the seasonal flu outbreak, epidemics, or previous pandemics.
The failure of the scientific literature to support medical masks for influenza and all other viruses is also why Fauci, the U.S. Surgeon General, the CDC, WHO, and pretty much every infectious disease expert stated that wearing masks won’t prevent transmission of SARS CoV-2. Although the public health “authorities” flipped, flopped, and later changed their recommendations, the science did not change, nor did new science appear that supported the wearing of masks in public. In fact, the most recent systemic analysis once again confirms that masks are ineffective in preventing the transmission of viruses like CoVID-19.
So, we must ask ourselves in retrospect, why did the position on masks change all of a sudden in April 2020?
Democrats were absolutely sure that the new somewhat conservative Supreme Court and the Texas law limiting abortion would save their bacon in 2022 and 2024.
The reason is that surveys have consistently shown about 60 percent of people say abortion should be legal in most cases.
Democrats were certain that outrage about abortion restrictions would translate into voter backlash against Republicans in the coming election cycles.
But Dems and their lapdogs in the media are finding much to their disappointment that people are not talking that much about abortion in 2022. Check out this story:
As the right to an abortion in the U.S. hangs in doubt, one thing seemed clear at the outset of 2022: the issue would tower over America’s midterm elections.
But in Texas — of all places — that hasn’t been the case going into the nation’s first primary.
Airwaves are not swamped with campaign ads focused on abortion access. Candidates spend more time talking about COVID-19, immigration and the reliability of the power grid. Some rallies and events come and go without even a mention of Texas having the most restrictive abortion law in the country on the books for months now.
“It’s almost like we’ve become numb,” said Democrat Ann Johnson, a state representative in Houston.
The change has disappointed abortion rights supporters who suspect that months of court defeats has taken a toll on their side at a time when a full press is still needed. Others worry that some candidates, particularly Democrats, still don’t know how to effectively campaign on abortion even after the tumult of last fall.
“It’s a community issue, it’s a public health issue and I think to not talk about it is like super blind,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, president of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four clinics in Texas.
It shows that both Democratic and Republican candidates alike in Texas have concluded other issues are currently higher priorities for voters in the primary — the economy, schools and health care chief among them.
Many believe the abortion issue will return to the spotlight in the general election campaign, when candidates are facing the opposing party rather than like-minded competitors from their own, and after the Supreme Court decides whether to weaken the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that guarantees the right to an abortion. The court’s decision on a key abortion case is expected by June.
But as the 2022 campaign begins, the Texas race has revealed cracks between the practical impact of the Texas law on abortion rights and the politics of the issue. Recent data confirmed that in the first month after the restrictions took effect, abortions in Texas fell by 60%.
Outside San Antonio this month, a forum of candidates for a seat in the Texas House — where the law known as Senate Bill 8 overwhelmingly passed a year ago — drew a crowd of more than 100 people in mostly rural Kendall County.
None of the candidates on stage talked about it, and no one in the audience asked.
“There was 45 minutes there that it could have come up, and it didn’t,” said Laura Bray, who chairs the local Democratic Party.
In her county, where President Donald Trump won 3-to-1 in 2020, Bray said Democrats purposefully avoid discussing abortion so they don’t turn off Republican voters they’re trying to win over.
What campaigns in Texas have been most emphasizing aligns with national surveys: although Democratic voters increasingly support protecting reproductive rights, a range of issues from the economy to gun control still rank higher, according to a December poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Across the country, Democrats have promised to make abortion a cornerstone of the midterm elections, saying the issue can energize their base at a time when their narrow majorities in Congress are at risk. The conventional wisdom is that abortion is more of a motivating issue for Republicans. But even Gov. Greg Abbott’s early campaign for a third term has also not heavily promoted his signing of the law, which appeared to go even too far for other GOP states where copycat measures have stalled.
“Abortion has never been one of the top issues for most voters,” GOP pollster Whit Ayres said. “It’s always overwhelmed by, in this day and age, the pandemic and the economy.”
The county where I live in Colorado lifted its mask mandate over the weekend, and happy Latter-day Saints responded by getting rid of their masks at church today.
It was great to see everybody’s faces, and people were happy and optimistic. A week ago, when the county mandate was still in place, about half of the people in Sacrament wore masks, and the other half did not, and there was almost zero contention about this situation. One of the reasons I love living here is that most people are truly tolerant and do not feel a need to boss other people around.
The masks were always about politics, not science
On the internet, however, not so much. I get hate mail all the time claiming I am “going against the Brethren” by writing that almost all masks are and always have been useless against viruses. Sorry, the uselessness of most masks is simply a fact (strangely accepted by almost everybody now), and I prefer to live in the world of reality, not the cult world that others have created.
So, as I said, until recently masks were “mandatory” in our ward because of local county guidance, but only half of the people wore them. And now that masks are no longer mandatory, but are “highly recommended,” nobody wears them. So, it appears that at least where I live all of the Church members are “going against the Brethren” by following the science, rather than the mask cult.
(This should be obvious, but I will write it anyway: if you are immunocompromised and wear a mask, you are not part of the cult. If you are perfectly healthy and still wear a mask because of COVID, you really should reconsider because it is not good for your long-term mental and physical health. But at end the end of the day, your wearing a mask doesn’t hurt me, so do what you want. But if you feel other people around you should be forced by government to wear a mask, yes, you are part of the cult and need to reassess your life).
Here is the reality: the Church only asked us to wear masks for two reasons: 1)because governments insisted on masks and 2)many people were afraid, and the Church was encouraging kindness by asking people to wear masks around people who are afraid. So what has changed? The government guidance, that is what.
The primary reason that no Latter-day Saints should have any anger towards the Church’s actions during the pandemic is that the Church was held hostage by thousands of tyrannical governments around the world anxious for any excuse to shut down worship services. If somebody is held hostage by a kidnapper, you don’t blame the victim, you blame the kidnapper. It was the governments doing the evil, not the Church.
Does anybody remember that the churches were among the first institutions to be shut down in March and April 2020, while pot dispensaries, liquor stores and bars were all considered “essential?” Our worship services were shut down for two months, and we could only go back under strict rules including massive chemical cleaning (the science clearly showed that COVID was not spread on surfaces, but again the science didn’t matter), distancing and masking. No singing was allowed. There is no doubt that many government rules seem to be inspired by Satan and are pure evil.
I don’t blame the Brethren for doing what they needed to do to keep chapels and temples open. I don’t blame individual members doing what they needed to do to go to Church and take the Sacrament. But I do blame individual members who joined the cult and gleefully came up with excuses to boss other people around and support the government tyranny taking place all around us. I blame anybody who ever yelled at another person to “mask up” or tried to bully other people minding their own business. This was a test, fellow Saints, and if you supported the government actions that limited other peoples’ freedom, you failed the test. You should be ashamed.
Take that shame and learn from it. For the next government “emergency,” (and there will be others) always stand up for individual liberty and true tolerance. If you find yourself supporting rules controlling the actions of others, rather than supporting their free will, you should stop and realize you are on the wrong side. It’s not that difficult. As I said, almost everybody in our stake in Colorado was on the right side during the pandemic. But the stories I have heard from other wards and stakes indicate there were many, many people who failed during the pandemic. Wheat and tares, my friends, wheat and tares.
