40 Alabama church members get covid from revival, pastor says they would do it again

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Yesterday Hecate reported on the story of 20 teens in New Jersey testing positive for the coronavirus after a non-socially distanced house party. People Magazine has a similar story about a whopping 40 members of a church in Alabama testing positive after a week long revival. I wasn’t too familiar with revivals but the pastor said there are day and night services and a guest evangelist and people take them home to eat with them. They had a loosey goosey approach to social distancing and masks and you can imagine how that turned out. What’s worse is that the pastor says that it was awesome and they would do it again.

More than 40 people have coronavirus after attending a week-long revival at a small north Alabama Baptist church last week, pastor Daryl Ross said today. Only two male members’ cases were serious, he said. “One respiratory, he almost got put in the hospital, but he’s OK,” Ross said. “The other one fought it off with two days in bed.”

“The whole church has got it, just about,” Ross said, and that includes himself. Ross said he has tested positive but has few symptoms.

The man believed to have brought the virus to revival also had no symptoms, Ross said. “He had three guys at work that came down positive,” he said. “From work, they made him test, and he came back positive. No symptoms.”

The man still has no symptoms, Ross said, but his “entire family” has the virus now. “I ate lunch with him,” Ross said. “No nothing. Not a sniffle. Not a headache. Nothing.”

As for himself, Ross said, “I can’t smell or taste, a little sinus, that’s all I’ve had. The whole church has been running fever and headaches and terrible respiratory (issues), and I’ve been building fences and bush-hogging.”

Preachers from other churches have called to find out what happened and how, Ross said. “We just know we had a guy tested positive right in the middle of the revival,” Ross said. “That’s all we know.”

Masks weren’t required for the revival, and Ross said “most members” skipped the week because of the virus. Churchgoers usually range in age from babies to 97 years old, he said. “We let everybody do what they felt like,” he said of those who came. “We social distanced. Most of them sat with their own family. If you were comfortable shaking hands, you shook hands. If you didn’t, you didn’t.”

“We knew what we were getting into,” Ross said. “We knew the possibilities. But, my goodness, man, for three days we had one of the old-time revivals. It was unbelievable. And everybody you ask, if you talk to our church members right now, they’d tell you we’d do it again. It was that good.”

[From AL.com via People]

Everyone I know who goes to church has been doing it virtually or drive-in for months. How stupid and careless is this, especially the part where the idiot pastor says how great and rewarding it was?! Plus it’s like he’s saying it’s not that bad and was worth it. If someone dies, will he still call it worth it? Was it God’s will that these people were so careless? All of their families, coworkers and anyone they don’t social distance from is now at risk. Maybe they won’t die, but someone 1-2 links down the chain might. People do not grasp how many other people they are endangering, and this is just as dumb as those teenagers partying. This is why we can’t have nice things in America, because people are still allowed to gather like this. Large gatherings should be outlawed nation wide like they are in other countries.

Last night I Alexad with my parents. They live in the epicenter of the pandemic, Florida, and are meticulous about social distancing. They haven’t met up with non-family in weeks, in any capacity. Their neighbors are testing positive and one is hospitalized. My dad said one of his golf buddies (who he doesn’t see anymore of course) is still playing golf with a couple he knows tested positive last week! One of my mom’s bridge friends (they play online now) flew to Ohio for a wedding reception with 200 people. Women I considered good friends are still planning get-togethers which are sort-of socially distanced but have no mask requirements. Apart from my coworkers and online friends, I feel like one of the only people taking this seriously lately.

These are stock photos from Josh Sorenson and Dan Whitfield via Pexels. I tried looking for photos of this church but they made their Facebook private

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19 Responses to “40 Alabama church members get covid from revival, pastor says they would do it again”

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  1. emmy says:

    This virus is freaky as hell. It seems that we have quite a few Typhoid Marys running around in the world and when they attend these large gatherings, all bets are off. But then you have families where only half of the household gets it even though they live together. I think the one thing we’ve learned is that large gatherings are a terrible idea while for example public transport (at least where I live) seems to be mostly okay.

    Overall the general diagnosis for humanity is, once again, stupidity.

  2. Edogfemme says:

    It totally feels like people are ignoring common sense to socialize. I see so many people going out and traveling. It destroys any ability to do effective contact tracing when we contact more people and the contacts are farther flung.

    I am carefully choosing outdoor activities with a specific set of people who are also on home isolation. If everyone did that, we could effectively keep track of infections.

    In person church is simply ridiculous right now, when there are better, safer, healthier options.

  3. Mel M says:

    I feel you on this one. Like I said on the teachers post, I live in a red county and definitely feel like my family is the only one taking this seriously. My in-laws are die hard Cheeto worshipers so they obviously think we are batshit crazy for social distancing and not visiting them while all of the other family members are because they too subscribe to the fox gospel. My own sister who, last I checked, isn’t a dump supporter, has been letting her children play with the neighbors and had a birthday party over the weekend for her kids and I’m pretty sure she has no idea if these people social distance or where they work or what they are doing or who they are seeing all the time. I don’t get it. And like you said about the links in the chain that just comes from a single person. One person can bring it to a group who brings it to their family who brings it to their co workers who bring in to their family and on and on.

    I haven’t been on social media in a month and I checked it out last night and my feed literally looked like a normal summer, people gathering and traveling and doing activities with no social distancing or masks and it was so disturbing that so many people I know are acting like this.

    • Lucky Charm says:

      I have relatives in California, and a couple of weeks ago they posted pictures of a baby shower they hosted for a friend. All summer I see pictures of the trips/vacations they’ve been going on, and boating on the lake with their neighbors, eating out, like it’s summer 2019 again. Last week my aunt & uncle were posting pictures of their trip to Washington and Oregon, but at least they were wearing masks in that photo. One of my cousins has two little girls, and my aunt is a retired nurse! It makes me so angry when I see them doing this.

  4. Kalmia latifolia says:

    Diagnosis correct!

    Like one of the current memes: We can’t say “avoid X like the plague” anymore because people are not avoiding it. In fact they actually run straight towards it, without a mask.

  5. ME says:

    Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.

  6. Kateeee says:

    No one in my house has left in 7 weeks, and that was only to take our quarantine baby to the doctor. Keep taking it seriously.

  7. Belig says:

    “I can’t smell or taste, no big deal”

    I want journalists to check back with this idiot in 1, 2, 3, 6, 12 months. The very, veeeery careful way doctors have been talking around this particular issue… They don’t seem sure that people’s senses of smell and taste will actually come back. Sure, that’s not life-threatening (or only in the sense that it would make it harder to spot spoiled food), but… I think it’s still pretty bad. So much is still unknown about this virus… I can only shake my head.

    • Sarah says:

      Pre-Covid but what I’ve read about people losing their sense of shell/taste is that it has a pretty significant impact on you’d quality of life. In our Covid world we don’t know how long that will last and there are people who still can’t taste after months

      • Belig says:

        The lingering/chronic forms are definitely one of the scariest aspects of this…

      • Betsy says:

        I have heard the same thing about losing one’s sense of smell, that it’s life altering in a negative way. I experience so much through my sense of smell, even though I am experiencing some annoying allergic congestion lately.

        And we really *don’t* know what the long term effects are going to be. We don’t know if the blood keeps clotting up, we don’t know if asymptomatic people develop some of those complications down the road because this is a completely novel virus. I am appalled at how many people are playing fast and loose with it!

  8. LaraW" says:

    This quote: “As for himself, Ross said, ‘I can’t smell or taste, a little sinus, that’s all I’ve had. The whole church has been running fever and headaches and terrible respiratory (issues), and I’ve been building fences and bush-hogging.'”

    1. Not being able to smell or taste seems like not a big deal until it stays for two months, you lose your appetite, you force yourself to eat textured slush with no guarantee that you sense of smell will ever be the same again. Doctors around the country have been reporting this when they follow up with covid patients.

    2. Fever, huh? That’s the beginning of the end. That’s your immune system starting to kick into gear because the virus has already done its job destroying the capillaries in your alveoli. You’re a step away from the cytokine storm which will drown you in your lungs while the virus continues to spread throughout your body as clots form in your kidneys, thyroids, brain, leave you with pulmonary embolisms.

    3. Headaches? Better hope that’s not a possible precursor to a stroke.

    4. Terrible respiratory issues – I hope your tiny county hospital that furloughed half its nurses and was already on the brink of bankruptcy has a ventilator. And I hope if you recover, you’re not one of the lucky ones left with shortness of breath that lingers for months, with no real end in sight.

    “We knew what we were getting into,” Ross said. “We knew the possibilities. But, my goodness, man, for three days we had one of the old-time revivals. It was unbelievable. And everybody you ask, if you talk to our church members right now, they’d tell you we’d do it again. It was that good.”

    Well, I hope your faith comforts you when you’re not allowed to enter the covid ward to visit your family as they die alone.

    • goofpuff says:

      Well what he means is that he got so much money and narcisstic worship from it, it was worth it for him. Nothing about that revival is about Christian values or they’d actually be concerned for the community.

  9. Sarah says:

    My main concerns are:
    1. The ‘1-2 people down the chain’ mentioned above, you may transmit to someone who gets it far worse than you and potentially dies.
    2. You may become seriously ill and might die, even if you’re low risk to begin with.
    3. By not getting transmission under control all the restrictions we hate will just go on that much longer with a greater risk of 1 happening!
    How is any of this hard to understand?

    • Mel M says:

      I know, I don’t understand it either. Anyone who doesn’t understand or want to acknowledge this has a child’s mentality.

      • Betsy says:

        Truly, worse than a child’s mentality. Our local library is opening up (for picking up hold shelf items only, and maybe they bring it out to your car. I haven’t read it yet), and my eldest asked if he could go along on the pickup run. I just stared expectantly at him and he said, “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Covid. One person per car.” YUP. So these people are literally showing less critical thinking or evidence of learning than an elementary kid.

  10. TeamAwesome says:

    This is the county where I live. Deep sigh. Please know we aren’t all this stupid.

  11. The Recluse says:

    The Darwin Awards are the new Olympics this year.
    These people…ugh!

  12. Kkat says:

    Can they have the revival in the oval office next?