“Coronavirus” is actually a category of viruses, sort of like “Poodle” is a category of dogs. The virus popularly known as “coronavirus” is more precisely known as SARS-CoV-2 (though also referred to as 2019-ncov, for “2019 Novel Coronavirus”) and is in the coronavirus family. One of the best sources of information on the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the disease COVID-19 is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The interactive data map from Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering (verified safe link) is also a great source of visualized data, close to “real time.”
Probably the best COVID-19 information in Canada.
Keep an eye out as well for Coronavirus Scams.
For related posts at SharperIron, see also COVID-19.
"Half of young people (ages 13 to 25) thought their faith communities had done well managing the COVID pandemic even though 90% reported receiving no personal contact from clergy." - RNS
"The National COVID-19 Church Attendance Project (NCCAP) represents our efforts to try to see the bigger picture. By gathering as many individual church stories as possible, from all over the country, we aim to provide a broad sense of the impact of COVID on the church and what the path to recovery has looked like so far." - C.Today
"Smith started Friendly Neighbor Epidemiologist, a Facebook page, in March 2020 ... Since then, the page, written in Smith’s friendly, informational voice, has grown to more than 96,000 followers. About half are evangelical Christians, she said. But threats and pushback have also followed" - C.Today
"...while the focus here is on church attendance, it’s logical to conclude that individuals who felt comfortable going back to weekend worship were also more willing to engage in other social activities. It is therefore difficult to isolate whether church attendance was the vector that most likely spread the infection" - The Conversation
"Over an estimated 10 million more Americans turned to the Bible in the past year than in years past, as one in four adults reported reading the Bible more frequently during the pandemic compared to last year, the American Bible Society’s 2021 State of the Bible report suggests." - C.Post
"The cable-news host has misinterpreted data to support a dangerous strain of vaccine skepticism." - National Review
For many of us it was never about fear. We wore masks. We social-distanced. We avoided gatherings. We encouraged people to consider participating in Sunday school and worship over Zoom or Facebook Live. We respected the officials who—for better or worse, correct or incorrect—made the tough calls and closed businesses, limited gatherings, and recommended or required masks.
We were not “afraid.”
We didn’t choose “fear instead of faith” and certainly didn’t choose “fear instead of science.”
What we felt was a sense of responsibility. We felt that responding wisely to a fast-spreading, largely mysterious disease required millions of people to do things that, individually, would only help a little bit, if at all, but that might, repeated millions of times by millions of citizens, reduce suffering and death.
This sense of responsibility seemed to be missing among many of our fellow Christians, and that grieved us.
Stewardship runs all through Scripture. The first man is instructed to take care of Eden (Gen 2:15). David publicly acknowledges that our possessions come from God and remain actually His (1 Chron 29:14, 16; cf. Psalm 24:1). Jesus teaches the parable of the talents (Matt 25:14-30) and declares that to whom much is given much will be required (Luke 12:48).
Paul gets intensely personal:
"Gaarder was a high profile conspiracy theorist who made TV appearances and edited an online magazine. He is known in Norway for sharing false information about COVID-19, likening it to the common cold." - NewsHub
