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| A graphic demonstration of social distancing's effect on spread of disease |
Republican officials took issue Saturday with Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's decision to track down people who attend Easter services and order them to self-quarantine, but Beshear said he was trying to avoid a repeat of a deadly covid-19 outbreak that has been traced to a church revival.
Beshear caught flak from U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, 4th District U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie and Attorney General Daniel Cameron for having state police get license-plate numbers at the "handful" of services that he says are planned. Health departments are to deliver quarantine orders to violators of Beshear's order against mass gatherings.
Cameron said on Twitter, "I encourage all Kentuckians to social distance and celebrate Easter in their homes, as I’ll be doing. I am, however, deeply concerned that our law enforcement officers are being asked to single out religious services. Directing a uniformed presence at church services to record the identity of worshippers and to force a quarantine, while doing no such thing for the people gathered at retail stores or obtaining an abortion, is the definition of arbitrary."
Asked to reply at his daily briefing, Beshear said, "To our knowledge, 99.89 percent of all churches and all synagogues and all mosques in Kentucky have chosen to do the right thing. They are making the sacrifice, as are all of their congregants, knowing that coronavirus will spread in any mass gathering in Kentucky." Many people with the virus don't know they have it.
Beshear cited cases in other states of deadly outbreaks from churches, and said close to 50 cases of covid-19 and six deaths have been traced to a mid-March revival in Hopkins County. Saying that he believes only seven churches are planning traditional services, he said, "That’d be 42 deaths, just if the same thing happened like happened in Hopkins County, so I’m willing to make unpopular decisions, no matter what it means for me in the future, if I can save 42 people."
But Paul tweeted Friday night, "Taking license plates at church? Quarantining someone for being Christian on Easter Sunday? Someone needs to take a step back here." Shortly afterward, Massie tweeted the same news story and asked, "What the actual hell?"
Beshear said Saturday, “I’m just doing my best to save lives and there aren’t easy answers. . . . You could do nothing and let people die. Number two, you could arrest a pastor; they did that in Louisiana; I don’t want to do that.” He said padlocking a church would also be wrong.
“All I’m trying to do is to say, if you’re making a decision to go to a mass gathering, it shouldn’t impact other people,” Beshear said. “Your decision should stay with you … just self-quarantine for 14 days so you can’t spread it to other people.”
He added, “I get, in people’s mind, if they say ‘I’m just making a decision for me,’ but you’re not. . . . It’s not just people who choose go to a mass gathering, but people they come into contact with, and people they come into contact with, and people they come into contact with.”
Beshear has encouraged drive-in services, as long as they follow social-distancing rules, but
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and Hopkins County Judge-Executive Jack Whitaker have banned even drive-in services.
U.S. District Judge Justin Walker granted On Fire Christian Center an injunction Saturday, prohibiting enforcement of Fischer's order there. and wrote a 20-page opinion that began, "On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter. That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel, or perhaps the pages on The Onion," a satirical publication.
Fischer told the Courier Journal that he had "no enforcement mechanism" for his order and said he wished Walked had heard evidence to that effect. Walker said in his 2 p..m. order that there wasn't time for that.
Walker's chief patron, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said on Twitter that he was "grateful for this strong, eloquent ruling defending Kentuckians’ religious liberty." McConnell had written to Fischer Thursday, urging him to allow drive-in services.
In other covid-19 news Saturday:
- "A day after Democratic leaders said the Trump administration would begin bipartisan talks over the interim relief bill" McConnell wants for small businesses, whose pool of federal funds is being quickly depleted, McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy rejected Democratic demands for money for hospitals and local governments, Politico reports, adding that the Republican leaders' remarks "suggest an end to the deadlock remains far off."
from KENTUCKY HEALTH NEWS https://ift.tt/2ybCzyk
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