Coronavirus Newsletter - Churches

 

General Update / Church Introductions / Korea Outbreaks / Are Churches Safe? / Singing / Creative Churching

General Update

Our numbers in the US keep trying to go down, however, there seems to be a small resurgence, which concerns me. We do need our active base to go down much more before the third wave starts in the fall. Schools seems to be the source of the more recent outbreak. But I already talked about that last week.

The NY Times hotspot map shows the south lightening up a little further (Tennessee is looking the worst and South Carolina might be going up again), and the midwest is still rising -- especially the Dakotas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri. 

Not much else to report right now, so back to churches ...

Church Introductions

This whole pandemic reminds me of a Babylon 5 episode I saw many years ago, when a fatal disease breaks out on the station. The good news is that it only infects one species from one planet, but it's very contagious with a very high mortality rate.

Almost immediately, the doctor and commanders institute standard epidemic isolation protocol. You separate out the sick people and make sure no one else catches it. At first it seems to be working, but someone sneaks in to see their child (or something like that). They catch the disease and pass it on to other people.

The doctor's doing everything in his power to get in front of it and save the lives of the susceptible species. But then when it becomes evident that the doctor can't find a cure, the species turn to their god. Only he can save them.

So, they all decide to congregate and pray together to their god as their religion and/or customs dictate. The doctor says, "No, no, no. That's a very bad idea. If you bring everyone together, you'll all catch it and I won't be able to protect you."

And the response: "Our god will protect us."

As you may guess, the whole species gather together in a cargo hold and lock themselves in. No one can get in, and they've cut the feed. After a couple of days, the commander finally gets in, but it's too late. They're all dead.

When I first saw this episode, my reaction was this: "That's stupid. This is just an atheist writing something that makes religion look bad. This would never happen in real life. Christians are much more intelligent than that."

COVID-19 proved me wrong. When the methods of fighting a pandemic can be on the easier side, people have proven in several countries to do exactly what it would take to maximize the spread of the virus, and it can be quite frustrating. It's not so much religion behind this, but just all-around ignorance of what the semi-easy fighting methods are. But churches, as you're about to see are excellent places for respiratory viruses like this to spread.

Korea Outbreaks

With this in mind, let's take a closer look at Korea. This is a country that I've been touting as one that's doing it right. They're taking the coronavirus seriously, and they're doing what it takes to fight it. And get this ... ALL WITHOUT A FREAKING LOCKDOWN. Well ... almost ... sometimes they do shutdown some specific infected businesses, and sometimes some hot spots such as bars in certain locations.

Here is view of Korea's Active Cases profile.

I've circled three pieces of interest. First, in red, is the initial breakout in late February. At first, spread of the virus was slow ... only 30 confirmed cases up through February 18. Then, Patient 31 started the big spread. She belonged to Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, and she decided to continue going to church after symptoms had developed and ended up spreading it to potentially thousands of other people. (Evidently Patient 31 had not been diagnosed until it was too late.)

This isn't your ordinary church, but rather, a mega-church with required attendance even when sick, and very, very close interactions with other people. To get a fuller understanding of how this church was perfect for spreading the virus, I strongly recommend watching the video embedded in the following CNN news article:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/26/asia/shincheonji-south-korea-hnk-intl/index.html

After watching, you should be able to see exactly how such a mega-church can spread the virus quickly. However, it should be worth mentioning that the church gave the government its full cooperation once it was understood what was at stake. Also, note that Korea only shut down this specific church and all its branches, but not other churches.

This last part may make you squirm, and if so, that's okay. It sounds bad to seemingly target a specific church and risk a church vs. state conflict. But it should also be clear that the reason to target this church justified its closure. Is it worth closing down an infected church if only to save lives?

This one event is believed to have caused most of the cases during their first wave. Looking at the graph, it appears to have taken about a month and a half to get cases down to a much more maintainable level.

It looked like it was going down to zero, but then on May 1, a sick 29-year-old man visited several bars and infected up to 100 people. This occurred among the LGBT community, so it proved to be a challenge for contact tracers (as people didn't want to out their friends). So, Korea had the relatively small resurgence circled in green. It took almost 3 months to get it back down, but it never got anywhere close to March's case levels.

The third outbreak? On August 15, sick members of the Sarang Jeil Church attended an anti-government rally in Seoul, infecting up to hundreds, which would then kick off the third wave marked with the black circle. But note how Korea is on this and is already getting the actives back down ... a little more quickly this time. This was a much smaller church, but still large enough to do some damage.

You can read more about them here:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-southkorea-church/church-at-centre-of-south-korea-coronavirus-outbreak-says-government-fabricating-tests-idUSKBN25H16W

In summary, Korea had three outbreaks: one was small, and the two that were on the larger side involved churches. One church is a humongous petri dish for respiratory viruses. The other church endangered lives by taking an anti-government stance, knowingly infecting others, and believing that everyone should catch the virus.

If only these guys had stayed home, then Korea would have had very low infection counts. Wow ... the power of hindsight!! As a follow-up, in August, the leader of the large Shincheonji Church was arrested for negligently letting the virus blow up in the country. Now, that was probably overkill.

But guess what ... whatever has happened in Korea, it has already happened thousand-fold in the USA. Everyday, we have at least three sick people, or people who know they've been exposed, that go out into the community -- "You can't stop the virus, so why should I try?" And the virus keeps spreading. It's very annoying, knowing that we could be like Korea with our economy much more open, with people taking the virus seriously, and making people like me stay at home waiting for idiots to stop spreading the virus -- but I digress.

You probably want to see what our Active Case profile look like? Are you ready for this? 

Yeah ... that's us. We're not even trying to contain this thing. It did try to go down the end of May, but then our economies opened up, and protests and parties added to the mix to start a second wave. And now it's trying to go down again -- most likely from the mask thing working. But I'm not sure how long it's going to last, because we're all about to go back inside, and schools are pushing the beginnings of a third wave.

And churches? They are definitely contributing to the spread. I should mention that if we were to superimpose South Korea's Active profile on top of the US profile on a per-capita basis, the Korean curve would be two little blips hardly visible along the bottom line.

So, what were two big church spreads in Korea would have been seen as little tiny outbreaks hardly noticeable here in the US. In fact, we're likely to have had at least 100 church-related outbreaks of same size. Pastors of mega-churches are getting sick. Some churches are being closed down after having opened, and contact tracers are finding churches as one of the sources of spread.

Some may accuse me of currently attacking religion and our first amendment rights ... but no, these are the cold hard facts. The virus doesn't care about our religious convictions, and from experience, we can see that God is not choosing to exempt churches from virus spread. People are getting sick, and they are dying.

Also keep in mind that churches are only a fraction of the cause of spread in our nation. I'm just identifying this as just one of many causes of spread. That's something our freedoms in the US give us ... the ability to infect the virus on each other in a variety of different methods!

Are Churches Safe?

I've seen this meme and several variations floating around ... basically, why is it safe to go shopping, but not safe to go to church?

If you really want to know, I could try to explain it, and it has nothing at all to do with religion or our 1st Amendment rights. It all has to do with how the virus acts.

First off ... yes, shopping is not without risks. We gotta get food and some other necessities. Every time we enter a store, we're risking catching the virus from others, especially if people aren't wearing masks.

But this virus has some weaknesses. For one, air flow -- moderate breezes -- can break up and/or move out aerosol droplets. If those evaporate, the virus dies quickly. If they disperse, then the amount you're exposed to becomes diluted. Many stores are aware of this and will increase air flow to help fight any lingering aerosols.

Also, when you're shopping, you're not staying next to the same person for more than a minute at a time. If someone's infected, they may send you a few droplets of virus ... not enough to infect you ... and then move on. 

You're also not socializing with people ... well, mostly not. No shaking hands, no hugging, and all that jazz.

And you're probably not talking that much to anyone, which is something that can spread the virus.

Now think of your own church to compare. How is its air flow? This may depend on the church. Is it all closed in with doors and windows shut and maybe one little air conditioner? Or is a big space with lots of fans going? The more the air flow, the better the chances of keeping the virus at bay.

Is there a lot and shaking hands and hugging going on? If so, that dramatically increases the chances of catching the virus, even with sufficient air flow. Smart churches will require that congregants not touch each other -- at least for now.

Is there lots of talking going on? If so, it's an avenue of virus spread. Socializing after the church service in a closed space with no air flow is about the worst thing you could do to spread the virus at a faster rate.

Is there singing going on? This could be even worse than talking because everyone is doing it at the same time. And if you sing like me, you're pulling in more breath and expelling more breath ... which significantly increases the chances of virus spread. I'll talk a little more about this in the next section.

Also, I hope that you're seeing a pattern here ... I'm not giving a direct answer to the question: "Are churches safe?" And that's because it depends on the circumstances. One church may take all kinds of precautions, and another may throw all caution to the wind. The one with precautions will be less likely to experience virus spread and remain open, while the one without precautions is likely to close again in a month or so.

And enforcing the rules is also important. A church could set all the best preventative measures, but then at the spur of the moment, everyone could start hugging each other, or start breaking out in song spontaneously, or just not adhering to the rules -- especially people who may not believe the virus exists. Sometimes this can be difficult to predict.

My church will be opening up next week if everything goes as currently planned. They're still working out all the details. And I'm going to have to make my own decision whether or not to go. If I feel unsafe, I will likely skip until I feel it's safer to attend.

Though, I'm impressed with most of the measures my church is taking worldwide to try to ensure safety. They have identified some minimum requirements for all church units to follow, and each area must come up with their own safety requirements particular to local exposures. For example, a church in New Zealand is much more likely to be fully open than a church in the mid-west US where hefty outbreaks are occurring.

Here's a link to my church's guidelines...

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/safe-return-church-meetings-activities

Singing

If you scanned through my church's guidelines, you may notice one major omission ... nothing much is said about congregational singing. It does seem to prohibit choral singing, but seems to allow congregational singing without masks (though contingent on further restrictions that may be added in local areas).

I think this omission is because in May when the CDC provided guidelines for opening churches (which my church follows), President Trump's administration had the CDC remove the warnings about congregational singing, fearing that such a warning would infringe on our 1st amendment rights (of which the virus is fully going to honor -- right?).

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/white-house-and-cdc-remove-coronavirus-warnings-about-choirs-in-guidance-for-reopening-houses-of-worship/

We know that singing is dangerous because it has already been shown to promote the spread of the virus on a "superspreader" level. A couple of choir practices in March turned out to be deadly. When churches reopened in Germany in May, some that allowed singing experienced outbreaks.

And I ought to know all this, because I'm a music publisher who gets most of my revenue from ... yeah ... choral music. And my sales have dropped like a rock this year. After a killer January and February, my business has basically crashed and burned since March.

But we're all trying to find ways to get back to singing. I miss it, as it's probably one of the best ways to worship together.

If you're at all interested in following the science, the studies, and the debates on choral singing, you should check out this closed Facebook group that specializes on this topic: 

Dialogues on a Safe Return to Choral Singing

I've learned of some fun mitigating measures one can take to safely bring singers back together. Some of the ideas involve singing outside, singing distanced from each other, wearing specially designed singing masks, ensuring adequate air flow in the room, and so on.

Creative Churching

Lastly, I want to talk about the whole "taking away my religion" aspect. As I don't think that's something that can ever be taken away. 

Over the past few months, we've been conducting personal church at home, following the weekly reading schedule my church instituted last year. I'm also frequently visiting one of my older ministering people to make sure they're okay.

Some people are taking to Zoom to hold meetings. BTW, Zoom is really, really bad for any kind of singing.

Some churches are holding a minimal number of people in-person at church and televising to the rest of the congregation.

Some churches are holding parking lot sermons ... like a drive-in theater.

Some are holding in-person services, but spreading it out, having people come at different times, or different weeks.

Some are simply holding church outside.

The fact that we can't meet in our stuffy packed meetinghouses doesn't mean we have to stop worshipping.

This is only a temporary situation until we can safely meet again in full force with the full congregation. That will be a great day to be back to normal!

Hopefully I've given you plenty to think about. If your church is smart you can find ways to reopen safely and protect the lives of your most vulnerable. I wish you good luck and success.