The Coronavirus Confrontations

A week or so ago, a guy from Ohio died of COVID-19, mere weeks after posting that the coronavirus pandemic was a hoax. 

Well, ain't that ironic? 

You might think that people might learn a lesson from that but then you're not Audrey Whitlock from right here in North Carolina.  

Here are three important factoids about this person. 

#1. Audrey Whitlock is a leader of the ReOpen NC Facebook group, which has close to 70,000 online members and has organized weekly in-person rallies demanding that the state reopen. 

#2. Audrey Whitlock has also tested positive for the coronavirus; she is an asymptomatic COVID-19 patient. As a person with the virus but not demonstrating any symptoms, Whitlock is right at the very core of why we're doing these lockdowns, quarantines and social distancing. People like her present the most unpredictable danger to those around her. 

#3. Audrey Whitlock does not give a fuck about the people around her.  "I have been told not to participate in public or private accommodations as requested by the government, and therefore denied my 1st amendment right of freedom of religion."  I will point out that not one damn stay at home order has infringed on Audrey Whitlock's freedom of religion. There are no jack booted thugs beating down her door and arresting her for her religious faith. There are no autocratic spy networks shutting down her Zoom or Skype to prevent her from communicating with others about her faith. 

Audrey Whitlock is one of those alleged Christians that I wrote about here.  

What’s the point of being a “good Christian” if no one can see you doing it? There’s nothing in it for them to be a “good Christian” alone in their homes. They need to be seen making a spectacle of their faith in a public setting.  “Look at me!” they proclaim in defiance of society and government. “Look at me, showing my devotion to my God!” What’s in it for them to stay home? Nothing.

Audrey Whitlock's freedom of religion is not being curtailed. It's her public displays of being religious that have been hindered and have upset her so. 

Whitlock's trying to make her movement seem non-partisan by claiming that "political affiliation[s] all become irrelevant when you are fighting for freedom".  But she has called for Gov. Roy Roy Cooper to be removed from office in November.  

Which brings us to the political component of these protests against stay at home orders.  Whitlock and others like her are finding resources and support from political action groups like FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots.  

“Our forefathers fought for freedom against the abuse of power, and we will resist it at all cost,” Tea Party Patriots wrote in one recent Facebook post.  

But how do people, real people without a political axe to grind, feel about this? 

It seems that most people understand the need for stay-at-home orders to curb the worst of the coronavirus pandemic.  Depending on the poll, between 58% and 81% of Americans were supportive of keeping current restrictions in place or even expanding them to the nation as a whole.

So what pray tell is going on here? While most Americans have a grasp on what we're doing and why with stay at home orders, who are these people gathering for protests with their misspelled signs? 

What's going is this axiom by Rahm Emmanuel: "Never let a crisis go to waste." As I noted in this post, this pandemic presents opportunities for the political right to undermine the political left. A lot of the outrage on the part of people like Audrey Whitlock is being churned up by hate mongering rhetoric from Donald Trump and a variety of political action groups to gain political advantage in a scenario where Trump and various Republican governors have been slow or ineffective in responding to the health crisis. 

Notice how Li'l Donnie can't say enough bad things about states led by Democratic governors under stay at home orders. Trump tweets out for his base to "LIBERATE" these states. Then the Republican governor of Georgia wants to roll back these same stay at home orders and suddenly, Trump is concerned the governor is moving too fast. Trump doesn't want people sick and dying in a state that may actually vote for him this November.  On the other hand, if you're in a blue state, then fuck you, fuck your Democratic governor and fuck the Democratic horse the governor rode in on. 

In a time of pandemic, Trump's political calculations remain in the fore front and those calculations run down to the corrupted Republican party and on down to people like that dude in Ohio who saw the coronavirus as a political hoax and it cost him his life.  Or to Audrey Whitlock of North Carolina who sees that curtailment of her public displays of piety as a infringement of her religion. 

In a time when people are sick and dying, there should not be room for such calculations. 

Or for such confrontations. 

During yet another “ReOpen NC” rally in Raleigh yesterday, North Carolina health care workers in North Carolina a counterprotest. 

About a dozen nurses, doctors and other health care workers, wearing scrubs and masks, stood with their arms crossed in a formation allowing for social distancing. 

ReOpen NC protesters displayed their lack of class or empathy by heckling and harassing the health care workers who remained silent in the face of this abuse. 


“My grandma taught me not to argue with a fool because onlookers can’t tell who’s who,” Amber Brown, a nurse from Kernersville.

It's a damn shame that Amber had to take time to do this after working long hours in the fight against the pandemic. But God bless her for doing this. 

It shouldn't be coming to this. 

We don't need confrontations. We need to be better than this.