Every single day my RN girlfriend gets urgent texts from her hospital system begging for people to pick up more shifts as they desperately try to keep up with urgent care and ER demand and I go to work across the street from THIS kind of crap.

Report back if anything changes over there please. I reported a big maskless gathering of people crammed together several times and as far as I can tell, it’s still going on. Some people might get mad because I’m talking about a church, but congregation could spread out and wear masks during service if they wanted to. They’re also streaming the services live so people can watch from home. They are specifically maskless and singing shoulder to shoulder because the pastor says every week that covid is a fear pandemic, that only cowards would be at home, that God calls them to worship by assembling all together, that the Supreme Court has turned its back on God, that the sheer number of suicides from isolation outweighs any pure covid deaths, and on and on. I know because I listened to a few of his painfully boring, cheesy, incorrect, blathering propaganda rants pretending to be sermons online. The church fb page also shows pictures of the pastor and his wife with local El Cajon police, all with their arms around each others’ shoulders, no masks, to demonstrate that the local cops will continue to let them do whatever they want to do. I want someone to explain to the congregation that freedom to practice your religion as allowed in the Bill of Rights doesn’t mean you can ignore public safety or health mandates or break laws because you claim it’s your religious practice. People can’t shoot heroin and say it’s part of their religion. That is still illegal. If a law isn’t particularly thwarting any one specific religion, but equally applies to anyone and everyone, like the law that you can’t kill anyone, for example, it is just fine and not compromising your constitutional rights. The people at that church aren’t being prevented from practicing Christianity anyway- they are simply being told to wear masks and stand apart to reduce the risk of transmitting this deadly virus. They are being assholes because they are Trump supporters (that’s in the sermon too) and he has politicized. This is mostly preaching to the choir though, I know. The church has been holding services almost the whole time with impunity. Multiple people have reported it to 211, the UT, nbcnews, 10news, abc8 (?)... doesn’t seem to be doing anything so far. A member of the church died in March or April of covid and that didn’t change anything. The pastor said the man was old and had other diseases anyway. What a guy, that pastor! Makes six figures according to not-for-profit watchdogs. Jesus has rewarded him, as they will all the poor church members giving him their money. They’ll get rewarded some day. If they have faith. To question when would be to question the Lord.

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