Lourdes shrine closes healing pools

[Tired of the Nonsense]

CATHOLIC HERALD
March 3, 2020
Lourdes shrine closes healing pools as precaution against coronavirus
https://catholicherald.co.uk/lourdes-sh ... ronavirus/

What does this say about the church's confidence in the "miraculous" properties of the water at Lourdes?

[Purple Knight]

Who said anything about correcting 1213 on mortality rates???

Nobody. I was just pointing out that even the experts' figures are not accurate.

1213 thinks this pandemic is fake and no worse than the flu:

I think it's more accurate to say he thinks the incident is being used by government, and that it's not that much worse than the flu.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/ ... asonal-flu

It's not worse than the Spanish Flu, with about a 2% death rate. (Even though fewer treatments were around back then.)

It's almost like when we get new a strain of flu-like illness, we'll get something between a 1% and 2% mortality.

I was shocked H1N1 wasn't higher. I caught it and almost died. Sickest I've ever been in my life.

[brunumb]

[Replying to post 11 by Purple Knight]

It's not worse than the Spanish Flu, with about a 2% death rate. (Even though fewer treatments were around back then.)

A better appreciation of the Spanish Flu death toll and the reasons behind it can be obtained from this article:

Why the flu of 1918 was so deadly
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2018 ... -so-deadly

Given the advances we have made in medicine, health and living conditions since then, together with the drastic actions taken around the world, a 1% death rate still makes this virus outbreak even deadlier in my opinion.

The next article also helps to illustrate how the virus spread so rapidly.

Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Was So Deadly
https://www.history.com/news/spanish-fl ... resurgence

[Mithrae]

As an aside, your obvious lack of knowledge about this virus is plain to see. I can only hope you don't contract it or I imagine you will be unwittingly spreading it in your community due to lack of care for what it can actually do.

I find it kind of bullyish to accuse someone of lack of knowledge when the experts recently revised their figures from 2-3% mortality down to 1.4%.

That's a 100% margin for error.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/16/low ... estimates/

An as-yet unpublished, unreviewed paper by one team is not quite the same thing as a conclusive revising of expert opinion. Especially when it's based on an analysis of only 425 early cases, leading to conclusions like "For those aged 15 to 44, the fatality rate... might have been as low as 0.1% or as high as 1.3%" (speaking of large margins for error).

Of course, even that paper's prospective results of a mortality rate 14 times higher than the flu still radically contradicts 1213's claim that "common influenza is about as dangerous."

Does it seem to you like anyone is all that knowledgeable about this virus?

It's a whole different can of beans than making fun of somebody for not knowing that caterpillars turn into butterflies.

This epidemic hasn't even been in the US for a month.

It's like making fun of someone for not knowing the theory of evolution less than thirty days after Origin of Species was published.

No-one is dying because of the theory of evolution. Nor was there ever universal, 24/7 information coverage of evolution in the news, social media, public transport announcements, posters, flyers and radical changes to day-to-day living. It's all well and good for people to display their ignorance on issues whose direct practical consequences are negligible. Even in the case of important issues which are nevertheless complex/difficult to grasp or kept out of the spotlight, it's at least understandable.

But when it's something as straightforward, widely-communicated and important as "This is a highly contagious disease much deadlier than influenza" (which itself is no joke to begin with), there's really no excuse for ignorance, misinformation and putting other people's lives at risk.

Presumably that also applies to the case of taunting religious folk with irrational arguments about a perceived "lack of faith" in their sensible, compassionate behaviour.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to post 6 by Mithrae]

Some folk demand a God who will step in to rescue them every time they throw themselves off a building. I suppose to those people - be they Christians or critics - taking basic sensible precautions like not throwing yourself off the pinnacle of the temple or spreading a harmful disease must seem like a "lack of faith.

Allow me to pose this question to everyone.

What obvious difference is there between a God who fails to act in response to His follower's grave need's, and a God who does not exist?

[1213]

Well, if you bothered to read the linked article in the OP:

“As a precaution, the pools have been closed until further notice.�

This really says everything …

But I didn’t find the answer to the question, was it closed because government ordered it. By what I know, in many places it is the government that has prohibited many things, also gatherings in Churches, which I think is evil and fascistic.

….As an aside, your obvious lack of knowledge about this virus is plain to see. I can only hope you don't contract it or I imagine you will be unwittingly spreading it in your community due to lack of care for what it can actually do.

How can anyone anymore go outside of their houses, when it is always possible that they spread some virus?

I think all people should be free, and those who fear, should be free to stay at home. Like Papa Wallenda says, “life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting�. It is incredibly stupid, if people renounce life, because they fear death so much. But even worse is that some people are trying to implement totalitarian system under the guise of this disease.

[1213]

Well, if you bothered to read the linked article in the OP:

“As a precaution, the pools have been closed until further notice.�

This really says everything …

But I didn’t find the answer to the question, was it closed because government ordered it. By what I know, in many places it is the government that has prohibited many things, also gatherings in Churches, which I think is evil and fascistic.

….As an aside, your obvious lack of knowledge about this virus is plain to see. I can only hope you don't contract it or I imagine you will be unwittingly spreading it in your community due to lack of care for what it can actually do.

How can anyone anymore go outside of their houses, when it is always possible that they spread some virus?

I think all people should be free, and those who fear, should be free to stay at home. Like Papa Wallenda says, “life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting�. It is incredibly stupid, if people renounce life, because they fear death so much. But even worse is that some people are trying to implement totalitarian system under the guise of this disease.

[Zzyzx]

.

But I didn’t find the answer to the question, was it closed because government ordered it. By what I know, in many places it is the government that has prohibited many things, also gatherings in Churches, which I think is evil and fascistic.

I would not object to people gathering in churches to share the virus among themselves; provided that they stayed there and did not infect other people (like cashiers, bus drivers, medical personnel, etc).

Is it 'evil and fascistic' to quarantine people who are highly infectious?

Are you aware that people who do not know they have the virus and have no symptoms can pass it on to others?

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 6 by Mithrae]

Some folk demand a God who will step in to rescue them every time they throw themselves off a building. I suppose to those people - be they Christians or critics - taking basic sensible precautions like not throwing yourself off the pinnacle of the temple or spreading a harmful disease must seem like a "lack of faith.

Allow me to pose this question to everyone.

What obvious difference is there between a God who fails to act in response to His follower's grave need's, and a God who does not exist?

While we're introducing tangential questions: Is it only things which are "obvious" in the course of day-to-day living that are true and/or important? That would seem to be quite a dubious criterion to my mind but, just like this whole 'lack of faith' argument itself, perhaps I'm simply not seeing the logic behind it.

[Mithrae]

By what I know, in many places it is the government that has prohibited many things, also gatherings in Churches, which I think is evil and fascistic.

Asking Christians to violate Jesus' command that they give a manageable fraction of the money they get from their boss towards constructing a nice building where they can be preached at for an hour or two each week

How can anyone anymore go outside of their houses, when it is always possible that they spread some virus?

I think all people should be free, and those who fear, should be free to stay at home. Like Papa Wallenda says, “life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting�. It is incredibly stupid, if people renounce life, because they fear death so much.

Doesn't the Torah explicitly order the isolation of people with skin diseases, presumably based on the fear of infection? Reacting on this scale to an annual flu season would be absurd, for sure: But in the case of a new and specific viral threat which depending on demographics and the availability/quality of treatment could be anywhere from twenty to one thousand times worse than the flu (France, Italy, Spain and the UK all have death rates above 9%, for example), taking all reasonable precautions to minimize transmission rates is just a matter of basic respect and decency towards one another.

But even worse is that some people are trying to implement totalitarian system under the guise of this disease.

As if 'some people' don't try to do that in every other year as well? One might say that it is incredibly stupid if people renounce basic compassion and decency towards others, because they fear totalitarianism so much

Taking either extreme of ignoring the threat of political exploitation or downplaying the threat of the virus is foolish. But whereas parties and commentators of all political persuasions in democratic countries are generally being very vigilant about exploitation of the crisis by those in power (meaning that broad-based or bipartisan exploitation is the only major threat on that front, in functioning democracies), there are some sizeable groups which are or had been actively downplaying the viral threat (often for ideological or short-sighted economic reasons as embodied by some right-wing politicians in the USA and UK, for example). Unfortunately, that kind of misinformation can and has contributed a great deal to spread of a disease which has already killed over seventy thousand people.

And here on this forum we also see posts taking advantage of the opportunity to criticize religious folk for closing a shrine...

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to post 19 by Mithrae]

Is it only things which are "obvious" in the course of day-to-day living that are true and/or important?

We have learned many things over the course of history that are not immediately obvious. Such as the existence of microbes, the fact that the Earth is not the center of the universe, and nuclear structure. After many centuries of trying, however, we have uncovered no unambiguous evidence for the existence of God, despite almost desperate motivation to do so.