Social-Restrictions Protesters Disrupt Governor Beshear's Daily COVID-19 Death Announcements

Governor Beshear does a daily 5:00 p.m. announcement of the COVID-19 count of new positive cases, number of deaths, and any new necessary information or updates. 

Today, while announcing 88 new cases and 7 new deaths (not to include 50 new cases that came in after his announcement) - a small group of angry protesters defied social restrictions by congregating on the front lawn of the state capital, then began shouting and generally being disruptive during Governor Beshear's daily announcement. 

They are protesting the social restrictions in place and what they (mis)perceive to be religious persecution for being unable to congregate in groups, in person, at churches (see below post).

This, despite the fact that Beshear's early adoption of the COVID-19 restrictions, compared to the surrounding/other Southern states, has been credited for the lower count compared to other Southern states (although some cities, like ours of Lexington, delayed for another 2 weeks, and testing is still not widely available).

Today has been the first significant drop in daily cases (yesterday was 171 new cases and 11 deaths) - but testing is still scarce - so we are still not out of the woods yet - thus the need for the social restrictions to continue. 

Let me repeat - Governor Beshear was literally announcing the deaths of people in our state from COVID-19 - and you can't hold your political-protest demands for your personal freedoms until he's finished at least announcing the deaths, out of respect for the dead??? 

Sigh. 

The delusion of falsely-entitled, "God-prefers-us," American invincibility strikes again.

Meanwhile, we received word that Mark's coworker's mother is in critical condition and clings to life on a respirator :(

So I'm sorry -  but this made me incredibly angry.

Because if nothing else, both conservatives and liberals alike used to agree that the reason state and federal laws were still necessary were to protect the physical safety and health of others. 

However, the demand for personal freedoms to say and do as you like -  without the slightest regard to how your "personal freedoms" will affect the safety, health, and well-being of others or consequence for doing so  - has reached selfishness and greed critical mass, in this country.

I'm sorry, but I do blame the political right for this social irresponsibility - as they have relentlessly promoted this falsely-entitled, greedy, selfish attitude, as well as initially spreading dysinformation and propaganda regarding the virus (along with a plethora of other issues).

Thus, not knowing what else to do with this anger, I will simply pray again, like I prayed earlier ...

God forgive us, and save us, from our own short-sighted, narrow-minded ignorance, selfishness, greed, and self-righteous indignation. 

I pray you will help my anger turn into pity - because the truth is, these poor people protesting are still completely unaware of what pawns they are - that they aren't risking their lives for the causes they believe they are. 

Thus, I pray that they will wake up and realize the very leaders they voted into power clearly do not care about the health of their own voters, or they wouldn't encourage them to put themselves and others' in harm's way - based on dysinformation about the virus those leaders produced themselves and know is false -  simply to keep themselves in power.

Amen.

__________________________

PS - Hmm, something about this smells of political coordination to me - especially considering the lawsuit was filed today (below post), as well as the GOP-led state house of representatives sponsored a bill today (not yet passed) to reopen businesses.