Another Aunt Sevvy lie

Adventist Today's Another Aunt Sevvy Purposeful Deception or Illiterate Interpretation?

By Ron Corson

 It never ceases to amaze me how the writers over at Adventist Today lie so often. I suppose they write for a select group of people who will only agree with their writers and who won’t even bother to check out what they say. Take this for example from the anonymous Dear Aunt Sevvy:

If you don’t believe in 1844, why remain Adventist, Aunty?

One General Conference official has written that religious liberty in the church means you can leave if you don’t agree with what it officially stands for. Because he sees it only from the office at the top, he doesn’t understand what a church is. 

Here is what the article by Clifford Goldstein said back in 2013:

All this leads to the gist of what constitutes true religious freedom issues, and why I would, as Liberty editor, often tell those church members who wanted to drag us into their church disputes, "Sorry, wrong department."

Why? Because as already stated, at the most fundamental level, church affiliation is voluntary. You freely choose to be part of that body. The state, and the power of force it wields, has nothing to do with your membership. If something happens that you deem unfair, you are as free to leave that church body, just as you were to join. As long as no state coercion is involved, it's not a religious liberty issue in the classic sense.

So in fact the General Conference official was saying you can leave or join a church that is not the meaning of religious liberty. He states the meaning of religious liberty earlier in the article by saying:

This concept gets to the heart of religious liberty and church-state separation. In essence, people who join churches do so voluntarily. They are there of their own free will. They are not forced to join, and certainly not by the state. By joining a church, one publicly associates oneself, to some degree, with the teachings, mission, and goals of that church. What makes that membership meaningful is, however, the free association with that body. That association, and the public proclamation that comes merely by linking oneself to the name of the church, has potency only because one has freely chosen it. Forced membership would all but denude that proclamation of any public witness, of any testimony, public or private, regarding your convictions. You would be there because you had to be, not because you necessarily believed in what the church stood for.

John Locke, one of the patriarchs of religious freedom, wrote in 1698, in the context of religious liberty, that "I may grow rich by an Art that I take not delight in; I may be cured of some Disease by Remedies that I have not faith in; but I cannot be saved by a Religion I distrust, and by a Worship that I abhor."

It is hard to believe any thinking person could produce what the Aunt Sevvy column says. 
There was only one place in the Clifford Goldstein article that actually used the word "leave" and in that same paragraph, it says leaving your church is not religious liberty in the classic sense. Then she continues by saying that he does not understand what church is. To believe that this is just misinterpreting a fairly simple article is hard to believe. It appears that it is meant as an attack on Clifford Goldstein, without actually mentioning his name though he is a constant nemesis for the people at Adventist Today. So the answer is pretty clearly not a simple misinterpretation of the article that Aunt Sevvy linked to. No, it is an attempt to fool people into thinking someone at the General Conference said something very dumb. Of course, the writer who remains anonymous could have given the quote from the article linked to but as that would not work at all with the writer's intentions they only linked to the article hoping that if the reader actually opened the article they would see Goldstein's name and let their bias take over. 

 I am sure though if their comments section worked many would praise the column. But as of now perhaps the Adventist Today site was hacked as when you click on their link to comment it takes you to a page that says

This content isn't available right now When this happens, it's usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it's been deleted.

It has been a few days and I don’t think they have even noticed!

 Update: 10-12-22

So it does turn out that I have been blocked from viewing the public posts of Adventist Today. I did not think that was possible but searching the internet led me to an article on how the administrator can do that even though it is not something mentioned on FaceBook's Help Center. It did sound like it would take a bit of time but since they apparently don't edit out errors in their articles they seem to have time to do it. It does appear from the first answer in the comments that the insertion of the false information had its desired effect.

G.W. 

"This is a great reply from Aunt Sevvy!

The flip side to this conversation is, "I don't feel comfortable around the leaders of my church, and those within their circles.

They seem to be looking for ways to exclude me.

I have no problem with doctrinal differences, but being at church doesn't feel comfortable.

Can I ask those people to leave?"

 

Jane, you ignorant slut

 Back in the early days of Saturday Night Live they did a take on the 60 minutes segment called point/ counter point.  One of the catch phrases for these skits between Dan Akroyd and Jane Curtin. Was Dan Akroyd beginning his counterpoint by saying “Jane, you ignorant slut! That is kind of the way I think of the Adventist Today Dear Aunt Sevvy column. Words of questionable wisdom from an anonymous possibly female or not.

In his/her column for October 25 2021 we learn from this ignorant writer that:

“Yes, healthy people are better able to fight off infections. But it’s been proven repeatedly that viruses are equal opportunity infectors. They do not care if you’re vegan, or if you eat nothing but pork hot-dogs for every meal. If you are unvaccinated you have a 1 in 8 chance of getting sick from Covid, and a 1 in 61 chance of dying. If you are fully vaccinated, you have a 1 in 13,402 chance of getting sick, and a 1 in 86,000 chance of dying from Covid. “ 

Do you believe that? Where is the source for this startling data? None given, a 1 in 61 chance of dying, really. We went through a year of Covid and we had no vaccine.  Did 1 in 61 people die from Covid19? Of course the answer is no. To even come up with the 1 in 61 chance we would have to start at a bit above 70 years of age. I am not going to deal with the other odds given, it is highly doubtful that they are any more accurate, however.

Let's look at what the actual science says. Before we look at the chart let us see what they say about that second Aunty sentence, that viruses are equal opportunity infectors. It is important because as the chart shows there is no equal death rates by age and sex. As you will note below the virus discriminates. Starting in the 20-24 age group men are about twice as likely to die as women.

One more thing to point out. 1 in 61 odds comes to (0.0161) or 1.6129% On the chart we do not see that level of deaths until the 70-74 age range (mean between sexes).  From the American Council on Science and Health explanation connected to the chart

“There are several observations worth noting. First, as we have long known, people of college age and younger are very unlikely to die. The 5-9 and 10-14 age groups are the least likely to die. (Note that an IFR of 0.001% means that one person in that age group will die for every 100,000 infected.) The 0-4 and 15-19 age groups are three times likelier to die than the 5-9 and 10-14 age groups, but the risk is still exceedingly small at 0.003% (or 3 deaths for every 100,000 infected).

Second, the IFR slowly increases with age through the 60-64 age group. But after that, beginning with the 65-69 age group, the IFR rises sharply. This group has an overall IFR just over 1% (or 1 death for every 100 infected). That's a fairly major risk of death. (The red line in the chart marks where the "1% threshold" is crossed.) The IFR then grows substantially and becomes quite scary for people in their 70s and older. People in the 75-79 age group have more than a 3% chance of dying if infected with coronavirus, while people aged 80 and over have more than an 8% chance of dying. That's roughly the same chance as rolling a four with two dice.

Third, the virus discriminates. Beginning with the 20-24 age group, men are about twice as likely to die as women from COVID. This pattern remains in each age group through 80+.

With this data, let's hope that public health officials and policymakers can craft smart guidelines in regard to what parts of society should be locked down and how vaccines should be allocated.

Source: O’Driscoll, M. et al. "Age-specific mortality and immunity patterns of SARS-CoV-2." Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2918-0 (2020).”

 

Don’t think that it is only science that Aunty knows nothing about he/she knows nothing about law either. The Adventist Today column includes this: 

There always seems to be a cry of persecution when a government makes a decision that everyone needs to participate in something for public safety. In 1969 when the government decided that everyone needed to wear a seatbelt there were people who said, “If I want to die in a car accident, I should be allowed to make that choice!”

 No the Federal Seatbelt assembly law was not that everyone needed to wear seatbelts as it was about adding the assembly to cars and it was 1968.

49 CFR § 571.209 - Standard No. 209; Seat belt assemblies.

§ 571.209 Standard No. 209; Seat belt assemblies.

S1. Purpose and scope. This standard specifies requirements for seat belt assemblies.

S2. Application. This standard applies to seat belt assemblies for use in passenger cars, multipurpose passenger vehicles, trucks, and buses. 

Since the law was about seatbelt assemblies it is highly doubtful that there was even one person whose response was “If I want to die in a car accident, I should be allowed to make that choice!”

 After about 25 years of ads to wear seatbelts the first actual wearing of seatbelts law was in 1984 in New York state

 

 

 

 

Let's be real about school closures.

One of the things I really dislike is when a writer asserts an absurdity to try and back up a poor argument. In a recent Adventist Today column the anonymous author of the pseudo help column writes in his or her article entitled: Aunt Sevvy, My Daughter Wants to Homeschool!

If schools open, whether full-time or part-time, for in-person schooling, there is no guarantee they will remain open for the whole school year. Some countries that attempted to open schools closed them again because coronavirus cases skyrocketed. (And no, children are not immune to this infection. While not as susceptible as older people, they can contract it, and some have died.) If schools opened and then had to close again it would create the same panic and disruption to the schedules that happened last school year, and that was a nightmare for everyone! If your daughter is planning ahead to school her children from home it might save them the trauma they had to endure last year. 

First what countries opened schools and closed them? The author simply expects us to believe that schools reopened and then closed because cases skyrocketed. In fact, a number of European countries have opened their schools and not closed them. Such as Germany, France, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, Greece, Poland, and Sweden which never closed. From the BBC article Coronavirus: How lockdown is being lifted across Europe. No mention of a country that opened up schools and closed them! 

The author then counters the argument that no one makes. "And no, children are not immune to this infection". The only reason someone might say that children are immune to the infection, though I have never heard anyone say that, would be because the infection and more importantly the death rate is so low.

'To combat the paucity of evidence around COVID- 19 and pediatric patients, U.K. researchers conducted the largest clinical study on children outside of China to date. The study spanned over 20 European countries and multiple age groups, ultimately including 582 children and adolescents between the ages of 3 days old and 18 years old with confirmed SARS- CoV-2 infection. The study found that the majority of patients under 18 years old experienced a mild disease and less than 1% of them died. COVID-19 in children is usually mild, deaths rare, study says

Some other info:

The CDC researchers found the 2,572 pediatric cases among 149,082 cases in total. That is, pediatric cases made up just 1.7 percent of the cases examined. This is a significant underrepresentation of that age group in the US. Children under 18 make up 22 percent of the country’s population.

Of the 2,572 pediatric cases, nearly 60 percent were in children aged 10 to 17. Youngsters under one year, those aged one to four, and five to nine, made up 15 percent, 11 percent, and 15 percent of the cases, respectively. Among 2,490 cases with sex information, 57 percent were male.

The data also suggested that the cases were largely mild, though they only had data on symptoms from 291 of the 2,572 pediatric cases. Of those 291 cases, 78 (27 percent) did not have fever, cough, or shortness of breath (the most common symptoms in adults). And of those 78 cases, 53 didn’t report any symptoms. That said, researchers could not dub these cases asymptomatic because it was unclear if all of their potential symptoms had been recorded. One case was reported as asymptomatic. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/cdc-reports-data-on-2500-covid-19-cases-in-kids-including-3-deaths/

The article actually never even answers the supposed original letter which is just as well. As the saying goes garbage in, garbage out. The real question is why not give some actual facts. There is a reason people like the author want to give a false impression to the readers. There is a reason with all the evidence that school closures are unnecessary, there are still people pretending it is not safe.