Three stories of good news concerning coronavirus

1. One hundred and fifty thousand immigrants from seventy-two nations with coronavirus stopped at border

The Washington Examiner reported in a 11 March 2020 article that 150,000 immigrants from 72 nations with coronavirus have been stopped at border.

Some 150,000 illegal immigrants from 72 nations with cases of the coronavirus have been apprehended or deemed inadmissible from entering the United States since November, raising the ongoing border crisis to a potential public health threat, according to officials.

New figures provided to Secrets show that over half of the nearly 300,000 illegal immigrants apprehended or deemed “inadmissible” this fiscal year came from nations with cases of the coronavirus, including China, Italy, Iran, and South Korea.

The administration has been bracing for a federal court decision that would junk its “remain in Mexico” policy and open the doors on the southwest border. But the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday put that on hold as legal arguments on both sides continue in the liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees Arizona and California.

“The border/immigration situation has taken on a whole new dynamic; it’s a public health threat,” said an official.

Secrets recently reported that 328 Chinese immigrants had been seized illegally crossing the border since the virus outbreak began in China.

So far, 150,958 immigrants from 72 nations with the virus have been stopped at the border. DHS has sought to return, repatriate, and remove as many as possible.

What’s more, another 43,000 from Latin nations including Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Nicaragua — nations that haven’t reported the virus — have been turned away to wait.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said last week none of the immigrants stopped by agents showed signs of the virus.

The administration has been making the case that continuing the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols that keep immigrants in Mexico pending approval to come into the U.S. to seek asylum is both an important national security and health security issue.

“MPP is all the more critical to keep Americans safe and healthy, which can only be accomplished through lawful and orderly migration,” said an official.

Another said, “We have a unique public health threat posed by individuals arriving unlawfully at the border, where migrants, law enforcement officials, frontline personnel, and the American public are put at risk. All it would take is a single infected individual to impact the detained migrant community within DHS facilities. Without proper precautions, which can only happen through orderly, lawful migration, the virus threatens to spread rapidly. Any halting of MPP would exacerbate this threat.”

Should the policy be lifted, holding stations run by the Department of Homeland Security would immediately fill up, and, there is the potential that the spillover would have to be shipped to facilities around the country.

(Read more at the Washington Examiner)

Luckily, the Supreme Court has decided to uphold President Trump’s right to keep this policy

Even the liberal-left, Trump bashing CNN reported that the Supreme court upheld Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.

In this age of Coronavirus panic, at least the Supreme court seems more reasonable than Bernie and Biden, both of whom pledged to open the border.

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2. Mullah who said Coronavirus was Allah’s punishment
   catches …

This comes from the department of “if you are going to claim an illness constitutes divine punishment on a group, make sure you don’t also catch the illness.” According to a MEMRI article published on 28 February 2020, one Iraqi Shi’ite scholar claimed that the Coronavirus was Allah’s punishment of China for their mockery of Islam.

https://youtu.be/K7BENXxou60
Shi’ite Iraqi Islamic scholar Hadi Al-Modarresi, who is based in Qom, Iran, said in a video that was uploaded to the Internet on February 28, 2020 that the spread of coronavirus is undoubtedly an act of Allah that is divine punishment against the Chinese for their treatment, mockery, and disrespect towards Muslims and Islam. In early March, online sources reported that Al-Modarresi contracted coronavirus.

Hadi Al-Modarresi: “It is obvious that the spread of this virus is an act of Allah. How do we know this? The spread of the coronavirus began in China, an ancient and vast country, the population of which makes up one seventh of humanity. More than a billion people live in that country. The authorities in that country are tyrannical and they laid siege to more than a million Muslims and placed them under house arrest. The journalists in that country began to mock the niqab of Muslim women and they forced Muslim men to eat pork and drink wine. Allah sent a disease upon them and this disease laid siege to 40 million [Chinese people]. The same niqab that they mocked has been forced upon them, both men and women, by Allah, by means of the state authorities and officials.

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“Islam forbade people from eating insects, but [the Chinese] mocked this matter. And there you have it, this disease spread from the world of animals – be it bats, ants, or snakes, the result is the same – to the human world and it has scared humanity in its entirety.”

Iraqi Islamic Scholar Hadi Al-Modarresi, Prior to Being Infected with Coronavirus: The Virus Is a Divine Punishment against the Chinese pic.twitter.com/7NiQki6qBy

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) March 9, 2020

Occasionally, you just have to laugh

While I don’t minimize the risk of suffering to this man, the eternal risk to his soul by following a twisting of the message of the gospel will cost him much more.

Still, in this case, you just have to step back and laugh when someone gets hoisted on his own petard.

Of course, other pieces of good news float all around this story. First, the good news that (in spite of both our self-righteousness [Romans 10:3] and sin [Romans 3:23]), God loves us and even this man and wants both us and him in heaven, if he (or we) would only accept the gift [John 3:16]. Another piece of good news previously blogged here is that Iranians have been turning to Christ due to the heavy hand of the regime, one-on-one evangelism, and the calling of God through dreams. Maybe this man can be reached.

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3. Most coronavirus patients recover, still anxiety, fear loom

According to an Associated Press article published 11 March 2020, most coronavirus patients recover. Still, with all of the media-driven hype, everyone is anxious. Therefore, it is really surprising when a bit of truth leaks out through the main stream media (as highlighted by the bolding, which is mine).

Amid all the fears, quarantines and stockpiling of food, it has been easy to ignore the fact that more than 60,000 people have recovered from the coronavirus spreading around the globe.

A recovered patient

The disease can cause varying degrees of illness and is especially troublesome for older adults and people with existing health problems, who are at risk of severe effects, including pneumonia. But for most of those affected, coronavirus creates only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough, with the vast majority recovering from the virus.

According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe ailments may take three to six weeks to rebound. In mainland China, where the virus first exploded, more than 80,000 people have been diagnosed, but more than 60,000 already have recovered.

Because the difference in impact can be so great, global health authorities have the difficult task of alerting the public to the virus’ dangers without creating panic.

Already, the widespread consequences of the virus have been staggering, sending shock waves through the world’s financial markets. Global oil prices sustained their worst percentage losses since the the Gulf War in 1991, and new restrictions were imposed in Italy and in Israel as the Holy Week approached.

But even some of the most vulnerable patients can fight their way through the disease.

Charlie Campbell’s father, 89-year-old Eugene Campbell, has been diagnosed with the coronavirus and is hospitalized in Edmonds, Washington. Charlie Campbell said his father’s doctor is cautiously optimistic, adding, “Under normal circumstances, he would discharge my dad, but these aren’t normal circumstances.”

(Read more at the Associated Press)

Who would think that the truth might leak out of the main stream media

Among all of the coverage of the hype, who would think that the news that “most patients recover” would be reported? Additionally, who would think that a caption to a graphic within the same article might point out that many cases have recovered? The take-away from that may be a conclusion that a medical doctor brought out during a radio interview on AM 740 KTRH: many people have probably caught the coronavirus without noticing that they had it and have recovered (thence, the mortality rate of this disease may be multiple times lower than originally projected).

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