Topic: Newsmax
You know a column will be a doozy when the publisher attaches not one but two disclaimers to it -- and that's what Newsmax did to Larry Provost's Sept. 1 column. As is standard with columns that push COVID conspiracy theories, Newsmax topped it with a statement that "The following column has been authored by a non-clinician." and indeed Provost started with the baseless conspiratorial claim that "Coinciding with election season '24 gearing up, warnings of COVID are appearing again." After offering some lip serviced to the severity of the pandemic, he started throwing in more dubious claims:
No reasonable person the severity [sic] of the pandemic; the number of patients flooding hospitals and mortality rates well beyond "normal."
Scores of bodies filling up morgues and refrigeration trucks attest to this grim reality.
The pandemic was real regardless of its origins (China), whether masks (were or are) effective in slowing it (most were not, nor worn properly), or the lie that getting the vaccine would serve as a "guarantee" to stop the pandemic. It didn't.
The virus became endemic: from people getting it and building up antibodies, and those eventually taking a vaccine for it.
Even at age 65, less than 1% of those who contracted the coronavirus died from it.
Provost then complained that churches and schools didn't reopen quickly enough for his purposes":
Yet, the church sadly bought into the politicization of COVID-19: by teachers unions (the same organizations trying to cancel out the words "mother" and "father" in schools) and others who had a personal stake in keeping lockdowns going.
The church could have set an example for the rest of the nation by getting back to normal as quickly as possible, at least for the sake of kids; for psychological and economic reasons and for the reason of staying in faith, while keeping Scripture close by.
The church as a whole, frankly, failed to say "enough is enough," and then reopen as before, at least for the sake of its younger congregants.
[...]
Children actually largely knew they would not die from the virus, yet they were forced to suffer psychologically from not being in school and not being in their places of worship.
More so, many children may have wondered: why be a part of an institution tacitly supportive the garbage laid upon them by other institutions: teacher unions, and goverment-oriented concerns?
We suspect most children were not engaging in anti-institutional rants that dovetail with Provost's right-wing activism. And by complaining that schools and churches didn't reopen quickly, Provost is, in fact, questioning the severity of the pandemic. From there, Provost moved on to grouse that churches being closed to in-perspon worship meant lost opportunities to indoctrinate children:
Children missed out on the preaching, teaching, fellowship (all variants of the Word of God), as well as the freedom Jesus offers from sinful lives, fallen homes, and our broken world.
As children were zonking-out through online learning and no social interaction, the one place where they should have been interacting (much more than the public school system) was in fact at a place of worship.
Our houses of worship were, and still are, the original "school" in our great nation.
It is there there children have learned about Jesus and his unconditional love for all of us.
Jesus suffered so we would not, so we would learn and stay in faith; to "be not afraid."
Provost closed by arguing:
In Christendom, the church (along with the family) is God’s institution for the organization of humanity, far ahead of anything Caesar could accomplish or mandate.
Hopefully, the church, and all of us, will well-remember this.
Will we choose man or God?
Provost's rant earned him another disclaimer at the end of the column, stating that "Views in the preceding column are those of the author and not any government agency."
