A panel of white women in North Carolina suggested this week that the Black community is making them seem like "bad people."
Ahead of the second night of the 2020 Republican National Convention, MSNBC's Chris Jansing presented the panel of North Carolina women who "continue to see the world through the lens of Donald Trump."
"Speaking for white America, we're not bad people," one white woman explained to Jansing. "We are very angry that African-Americans and the Black American community has been marginalized, victimized."
She continued: "So what happens is, it's like if you align yourself with Donald Trump, you're a racist."
Another woman agreed with the sentiment.
"I've tried to have these conversations and was just force-fed that I was wrong just because I was a white woman and I was a Trump supporter," Hayden Desio-Munn complained.
"Yeah," the first woman lamented. "We are suddenly all bad and so I think where white America feels frustrated [and it] makes us want to vote for Trump. So, it's kind of backfiring."
When Desio-Munn explained that Trump "wants to take the United States back where it should be," the lone black Democrat on the panel spoke up to object.
"I don't know which America you are seeking," attorney Althea Richardson-Tucker said. "Is it 20 years ago? Is it 10 years ago? Is it the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s? We were discriminated against, we were vilified. We do not want to go back to that. However, going back to a country that believes in Democracy, that's the country we want to see."
President Donald Trump left the White House during the COVID-19 pandemic on Friday to attend an Independence Day event in South Dakota.
Trump was told not to attend but did so anyway.
“Trump coming here is a safety concern not just for my people inside and outside the reservation, but for people in the Great Plains. We have such limited resources in Black Hills, and we’re already seeing infections rising,” the Oglala Sioux president, Julian Bear Runner, told the Guardian. “It’s going to cause an uproar if he comes here. People are going to want to exercise their first amendment rights to protest and we do not want to see anyone get hurt or the lands be destroyed."
Every night, from their balconies and windows, the French publicly applaud healthcare workers and nursing staff on the frontline in the fight against Covid-19. In France, nearly 90 percent of nurses are female. So how are these women coping with this unprecedented crisis? FRANCE 24 spoke to four of them.
"For the moment, our most important mission is to help patients but if this continues, they will have to find cannon fodder elsewhere," said Leslie, a palliative care nurse in Marseille, working 12 hours a day to care for people at the end of their life.
Like all hospitals and clinics in France, her department is constantly receiving critical Covid-19 cases: "We have drastically reduced visits, so imagine telling families, who know their loved ones are at the end of their life, that they have no right to see them. Psychologically, this is incredibly difficult for us. We are their only contact before they die. "
In her department, there is only one male employee out of 18 nurses. It’s estimated that 88 percent of nurses are women, according to SNPI, a French union for nurses.
'Isaid to myself: if it’s positive, that's it, I'm finished'
The 31-year-old nurse said her clinic recently saw a patient in the final stage of cancer who showed symptoms suggesting coronavirus. "He had a fever and respiratory failure. He arrived at our department in the morning but the doctor decided to test him at 2pm. Yet throughout the morning, I was in close contact with him without protection."
The result did not come back until the next day, creating enormous anxiety for Leslie. "I said to myself: if it's positive, that's it, I'm finished."
It turned out that he was negative but Leslie was still furious at the lack of responsiveness from her superiors which had been the case since the pandemic broke out in France. The same is true for Sylvie*. The 50-year-old nurse has been practicing for 20 years and now works for a mobile emergency and resuscitation service in northern France. As soon as she heard of the epidemic in China, she began to study the virus.
"When I saw what was happening there, I said to myself, we had to prepare. We’re now realising how serious the situation is; we should have been better prepared,” Sylvie said.
One morning, she was looking after a 22-year-old female patient who had a 40°C degree temperature while struggling for oxygen: "She was like a dog after a race, very short of breath. We transferred her to intensive care as soon as she arrived."
Like many, Sylvie did not think that young people would be seriously at risk. "And here’s a concrete example of a 22-year-old suffering serious symptoms. She has a good chance of coping but her case was very worrying,” she said.
She worried that information was not being passed on to frontline workers. "We’re told that surgical masks are enough but we don’t believe it. The doctors themselves are not even aware of all the measures to take when there is a doubt about a patient."
'We ended up wearing a mask a day when we should have changed it every three to four hours'
Pauline* is a nursing assistant in Bordeaux. In her cardiology department, as with all medical facilities in France, non-emergency operations have been postponed since mid-March at the government’s request.
Surrounded by a majority of women in her workplace (39 out of 40 nurses), she confirmed there had been a lack of equipment and problems with distribution.
"As they were afraid of thefts, they stored everything in locked management offices. Every time, we need a new mask, we have to ask permission to access their offices. So we ended up wearing a mask a day when we should have changed it every three to four hours," Pauline told FRANCE 24.
Many French healthcare workers have been openly critical about the lack of personal protective equipment since the beginning of the pandemic.
'We just don't know how big this storm is'
In her unit, Virginie*, has at least 10 patients with Covid-19.The night nurse at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris does not complain but readily admits the work is unrelentless.
"The infected patients come here. We have to decide where to place them: send them home if it's not too serious or send them to an intensive care unit when their condition deteriorates. We also have to disinfect the rooms; it doesn't stop. It’s making us question all of our medical knowledge,” she told FRANCE 24 while saying she had never experienced a situation like this since she began working in 1996.
Virginie added that she is “a little anxious but not afraid".
In her department, made up mainly of women, two colleagues have caught the coronavirus. "The main thing is not to convey our anxieties to patients, but we have to be honest, we just don't know how big this storm is."
*Names have been changed
This article has been translated from the original in Frenchby Annette Young
Mehmet Cengiz Öz, better known to America's TV viewers as Dr. Oz, is calling for the nation's schools to be re-opened despite the coronavirus pandemic that has already killed over 34,000 Americans. He argues that the cost will be "only" an additional 2% to 3% in additional lives lost as a result – a "tradeoff" he suggested that would be worthwhile to get the economy re-opened.
"Schools are a very appetizing opportunity," Dr. Oz told Sean Hannity (video below). "I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing the opening of schools may only cost us 2% to 3% in terms of total mortality," Dr. Oz, who is actually a real, albeit "celebrity" doctor, said Wednesday.
"Any life is a life lost but to get every child back into a school where they are safely being educated, being fed, and making the most of their lives, with the theoretical risk on the back side, might be [a] tradeoff some folks would consider."
Dr. Oz, who has been labeled an "alleged quack," is promoting the use of the malaria drub hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients, despite there being no hard evidence it works – and studies show it can be deadly. He's advising President Donald Trump on the drug.
Many are interpreting his words – which were at best poorly chosen especially for a professional who has taken an oath to "do no harm" – as meaning "only" an additional death of 2% to 3% of the nation's children would die, which is horrific, but incorrect.
Oz, who's a promoter of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients, saying opening schools would add an additional 2% to 3% to the total death toll, which is also horrific.
DR OZ: "Schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing the opening of sch… https://t.co/j208vgdW4M
Doing some quick math, the total death toll as of today would increase by about 850 people. That's actual people, maybe your neighbor, a family member, a colleague, a friend. Dr. Oz is saying an extra 850 people would be a "tradeoff" to consider.
And he's saying the government should make that decision.
Which sounds something akin to Sarah Palin's "death panels" being made real.
Here's how some are responding on social media:
@atrupar That's 6.5 million to 11.5 million dead Americans
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Wednesday she will take a 20 percent pay cut in a symbolic act of solidarity with people struggling financially during the coronavirus pandemic.
Ardern said her personal salary, those of her fellow ministers and of top public servants would be slashed by a fifth for six months.
The move will see Ardern's annual pay fall from around NZ$470,000 (US$285,000) to NZ$376,000, costing her about NZ$47,000 over the six-month period.
"While it in itself won't shift the government's overall fiscal position, it is about leadership," she told reporters.
"This was always just going to be an acknowledgement of the hit that many New Zealanders will be taking at the moment."
The centre-left leader said the cut would not be implemented across the public service.
"Many people in our public sector are frontline essential workers -- nurses, police, healthcare professionals," Ardern said.
"We are not suggesting pay cuts here, nor would New Zealanders find that appropriate."
New Zealand is in the midst of a four-week COVID-19 lockdown that has paralysed the economy, with thousands of jobs losses already announced.
Economic modelling released by the Treasury department this week predicted unemployment -- currently about 4.0 percent -- could soar to almost 26 percent in a worst-case scenario.
Ardern said her wage cut was a small contribution to easing pay inequalities in society.
"If ever there was a time to close the gap between different positions, it's now," she said.
"This is where we can take action which is why we have."
Opposition leader Simon Bridges said that he would also take a 20 percent pay cut.
Ecuador's economic capital Guayaquil is reeling from the most aggressive outbreak of COVID-19 in Latin America after the pandemic hit the city "like a bomb," its mayor said.
Cynthia Viteri has emerged from her own bout with the virus to battle the worst crisis the port city of nearly 3 million people has known in modern times.
"There is no space for either the living or the dead. That's how severe the pandemic is in Guayaquil," Viteri told AFP in a phone interview Monday.
Mortuaries, funeral homes and hospital services are overwhelmed, and Viteri said the actual death toll from the virus is likely much higher than the official national figure of 369.
Guayaquil accounts for more than 70 percent of Ecuador's 7,600 infections since February 29.
'Unprepared'
The 54-year-old mayor admitted the city was "unprepared" for the onslaught: "Nobody believed that what we saw in Wuhan, people falling dead in the streets, would ever happen here."
Now authorities are forecasting a death toll of more than 3,500 in the city and its hinterland in the coming months.
Guayaquil proved especially vulnerable to the virus because of its air links to Europe, Viteri said.
The first case of infection -- Ecuador's "patient zero" -- was of an elderly Ecuadoran woman who arrived from Spain.
"This is where the bomb exploded, this is where patient zero arrived, and since it was vacation time, people traveled abroad, some to Europe or the United States, and our people who lived in Europe came here," Viteri said.
"And when they arrived there were no controls like they should have been if we had known that this was already coming by air. And the city of Guayaquil simply convulsed. "
Too late, the city went into lockdown as authorities imposed a 15-hour curfew and bodies began to accumulate in homes, and even on the streets.
"The health system was obviously overwhelmed, the morgues overflowed, the funeral homes overflowed."
Guayaquil's authorities "are not the villains of the world," Viteri insisted.
"We are the victims of a virus that came by air" that she said echoed the yellow fever that devastated the city when it came over the sea from Panama in 1842.
"A bomb exploded here. Other places received only the shock waves. But the crater remained here in Guayaquil."
Counting the dead
Viteri said the number of coronavirus deaths in the city is likely far higher than the official figure "for a single reason -- because there are no tests to determine how many people are actually infected in the city and in the country."
She continued: "Patients are dying without ever having had a test. And there is no space, time or resources to be able to carry out subsequent examinations and to know whether or not they died from the coronavirus.
"In the month of March alone, there were 1,500 more deaths than in the month of March last year.
"The true number will be known once this tragedy, this nightmare, ends."
People are continuing to "collapse in their houses, in the hospitals, all over the place," she said, because the normal medical services are overwhelmed.
"There are still women who need to give birth, people are still being run over, people still have diabetes and hypertension."
She said just last month alone "100 people" had died because they were unable to get dialysis treatment.
"Why? Because there is no space. Because we are stretched to breaking point, our doctors have fallen sick too."
Around 50 people from her own municipal staff had died, she said.
Viteri said her task now was to bring all the city's financial resources to bear on buying test kits, with $12 million already earmarked, to be able to detect, isolate and monitor positive cases.
"For me there is no other way," she said.
"We have to look after the living, and provide a decent burial for the dead. We are living in a war.
Responding to a spate of nightmarish media stories about bodies accumulating in hospitals, homes and streets, the city was making two new cemeteries available to bury the dead and relieve pressure on city morgues.
"The bodies are being collected daily," Viteri said.
"But this is very hard because it means there is mourning every day in Guayaquil."
Governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday set out conditions for lifting California's coronavirus lockdown, but warned it would be at least two weeks before any timeline for reopening the state could be announced.
Newsom said stay-at-home orders had "bent the curve" in the nation's most populous state, but warned against moving too quickly and insisted decisions should be based on science not politics.
Hospital cases would need to decline over "a few weeks," testing capacity improve, and "floor plans" of workplaces and schools be changed to allow social distancing before restrictions can be lifted, he said.
"In two weeks if we see a continued decline, not just flattening but decline in hospitalizations and ICUs" and infrastructure targets are met, "ask me the question then," said Newsom.
His comments came ahead of President Donald Trump's unveiling of a task force for reopening the US economy, which has raised fears in hard-hit states that he will rush the decision.
With at least 24,579 confirmed cases including 734 deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker, California is among the worst-affected US states. All 40 million residents have been under orders to stay at home since March 19.
Trump's threat to invoke disputed "total" constitutional powers to force state governors to follow his orders has prompted an outcry.
"Let's not make the mistake of pulling the plug too early, as much as we all want to," said Newsom. "I don't want to make a political decision that puts people's lives at risk."
"I know you want the timeline. But we can't get ahead of ourselves," Newsom added, calling the prospect of mass gatherings such as concerts or sporting events taking place before August "unlikely."
Other criteria for reopening included building better resources for high-risk people, preparing hospitals to handle future surges, and agreeing to guidelines for when to ask Californians to stay home again if required.
Restaurants could eventually reopen with fewer tables, and face-covering masks may become common in public after restrictions are eased.
"You may be having dinner with a waiter wearing gloves, maybe a face mask, where the menu is disposable, where half of the tables in that restaurant no longer appear, where your temperature is checked before you walk in to the establishment," said Newsom. "These are likely scenarios."
The definition of "essential" workers could be expanded, and school start times may be staggered, he said.
More than 2.3 million Californians have filed for unemployment benefits in the last month, while the lockdown has prompted fears over lasting damage to the economy and population health.
On Monday, Newsom and the governors of nearby Oregon and Washington states announced an agreement on a shared vision to reopen their economies.
"This is not a permanent state and there is some light at the end of the tunnel," said Newsom.
A coronavirus test made by Abbott Laboratories and introduced with considerable fanfare by President Donald Trump in a Rose Garden news conference this week is giving state and local health officials very little added capacity to perform speedy tests needed to control the COVID-19 pandemic.“That’s a whole new ballgame,” Trump said. “I want to thank Abbott Labs for the incredible work they’ve done. They’ve been working around-the-clock.”Yet a document circulated among officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency this week shows that state ...
The government assigned additional security for Dr. Anthony Fauci in the face of growing threats and fawning admirers.
The infectious-diseases expert has become the face of the U.S. government's response to the coronavirus outbreak, and he has also become a target for criticism from right-wing commentators and bloggers who want President Donald Trump to ease social distancing restrictions to restart the economy, reported the Washington Post.
Articles describing the 79-year-old Fauci as a "deep state" agent have gained tens of thousands of interactions on Facebook and were shared on pro-Trump group pages.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar also grew concerned for Fauci's safety after admirers approached the physician asking for autographs, and he decided to order a security detail.
Fauci, when asked about the security, referred questions to the HHS inspector general, who said the U.S. Marshals had assigned some agents to the physician, but Trump denied they were even needed.
“He doesn’t need security," Trump said. "Everybody loves him.”
In normal times, an N95 face mask would cost a big corporation a buck or less — particularly if it ordered a million of them.
But these aren’t normal times, and the pitch from industrial supplier Hatfield and Co. to sell as many as2million masks to a major U.S. oil company last week wasn’t your typical offer. The Texas-basedsupplier wanted $6.3 million for a minimum order of 1 million masks, with an option of buying 2 million for nearly $13 million, sales documents and interviews indicate.
At a time when the new coronavirus is rapidly spreading across the country and health care professionals are desperate for these face masks — which filter out at least95% of airborne particles— to protect sick people and themselves, critics say a price like that smacks of profiteering and price gouging by someone in the supply chain.
“You’re not just marking it up like 50 cents. This is highway robbery,” said an industry salesperson familiar with Hatfield and Co.’s pitch, who is not authorized to speak to the media and requested anonymity. “It’s just disgusting to me.”
A sales quotation provided to an oil company by Hatfield and Co. shows an offer to sell 1 million N95 masks for more than $6.3 million cash, or $6.4 million if payment was made within 30 days.
Hatfield and Co. said it did not mark up the product excessively or engage in price gouging, telling The Texas Tribune that its own supplier set the “terms and conditions” for the sale. The company declined to identify the supplier or quantify how much it stood to profit, citing its contractual agreements.
Brad Lindeman, the Beaumont-based Hatfield and Co. salesman listed as the contact for the proposed sale, said in a brief telephone interview Sunday that the company had access to an undisclosed quantity of the N95 masks that are stored in warehouses all over Texas and other states.
“There are some in Houston, Dallas, Florida and you know, I guess you would say spread out all over,” Lindeman said. “The inventories are constantly moving, so it's kind of hard to explain exactly what the quantities are."
Lindeman said a "group of doctors" has the masks but did not elaborate. He cut off an interview with a Tribune reporter after a couple of minutes and declined further comment.
On Monday morning, Hatfield'spresident and chief operating officer, Scott Beeman, said the masks were provided by a reseller the company had not worked with before. He added that the resellerimposed a minimum order size of 1 million masks and that its costswere reflected in Hatfield and Co.’s quotation to the oil company.
Beeman declined to identify the reseller and said he had “no way of knowing ... the veracity of the statement that [Lindeman] was told regarding a doctor or a consortium of doctors owning or having access to this material.”
“I cannot release any information about our supplier; we do have a written quotation from that company,” Beeman wrote in an email. “We will be willing to disclose that to the State’s Attorney General and/or to the head of Purchasing for our customer, so that they can both verify that there was no ‘price gouging’ involved in our pricing to the customer.”
Beeman added that Hatfield’s profit margin was “historically low for our company and was priced that way in the spirit of cooperation.” He didn't reveal the company's profit for brokering a sale of the masks.
The company, based in the Dallas suburb of Rockwall, does not stock N95 face masks as part of its normal line of products, Beeman said. The company sells engineering products such as filtration devices and valves for clients in the oil and gas sector and the auto industry, and to refining and power companies, according to a Bloomberg profile. Beeman said the company found a supplier for the masksat the request of a customer who wanted them immediately.
Demand for protective equipment like masks has soared since the outbreak began, exacerbated by the disruption of overseas supply chains and a flood of purchases from panicked civilians. The U.S.surgeon general has told the public to save the N95s for health care professionals who need them — “Seriously people - STOP BUYING MASKS!” he tweeted in February — but demand has pushed prices for the masks to $10, $12 or even $15.
Entrepreneurial and civic-minded Texans — from amateur seamstresses to a chocolate factory owner — have begun churning out protective equipment for health care providers. And Gov. Greg Abbott has told potential suppliers, “We’ll cut you a check on the spot.”
The manufacturer Lindeman identified as the originalsource of the masks — Minnesota-based 3M, one of the largest manufacturers of N95s — did not immediately return calls and emails seeking comment. Its chief executive officer, Mike Roman, has encouraged federal and state officials to crack down on price gouging and said the company has not and will not increase the price it charges for the masks “being used to help address the pandemic.”
Under the state’s price-gouging laws, it is illegal to charge “exorbitant or excessive” prices for necessities during a disaster, and Attorney General Ken Paxton has said he won’t tolerate people and businesses using the pandemic to profit.
“No one is exempt from price gouging laws in Texas, and those who violate the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act will be met with the full force of the law,” the attorney general’s office tweeted.
The state sued a Houston-area company last week that was trying to auction more than 750,000 masks online, with listings as high as $180 for a package of 16. Price-gougers in Texas can face civil penalties and be required to reimburse consumers.
The Texas price-gouging law applies to items considered to be necessities during an official emergency, like food, medicine and construction tools. Abbott declared a disaster on March 13 due to the coronavirus, and President Donald Trump declared a federal emergency that same day — two weeks before Hatfield and Co. offered its price quoteto the oil company.
Consumers and small businesses can sue under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act if they believe they’ve been the victims of price gouging. They can recover up to three times their damages and attorneys’ fees. Consumers, small businesses and large corporations like the oil company Hatfield was trying to sell masks to can also complain to the attorney general, who has broad powers to sanction profiteers.
Without knowing all the details about the transaction and the suppliers,experts say it’s impossible to know whether Hatfield and Co.’s offer, or one further down the supply chain, would amount to price gouging.
The statute doesn’t define what level a markup has to reach in order for it to be considered “exorbitant or excessive.”
But a price of over $6 a mask struck Professor Emeritus Richard Alderman, director of the University of Houston’s Consumer Law Center, as high given that the masks, according to numerous online offerings and published reports, could be obtained for a dollar or lessbefore the outbreak began.
“If the costs of materials or doing business went up substantially, that, to me, would be a mitigating factor. But … start with just looking at whether that price is excessive or exorbitant,” he said. “And for me, six times normal cost — that's 600%. I view that as excessive and exorbitant — something that they can only do because of the emergency situation.”
Health care and medicalsupply executives suggest there’s now a booming gray market of personal protective equipment filled with middle men and fake products, and stoked by desperation from health care providers already running low on the gear. Governorshavesaid states are bidding against one another, driving up prices, and state attorneys general have reported being inundated with complaints about exorbitantly priced items like hand sanitizer and masks. More than 30 state attorneys general urged online marketplace operators to crack down on profiteering behavior last week.
But experts say the line between supply and demand forces and price gouging can be hard to define.
Rice University professor Utpal Dholakia said thoughtfully set prices should reflect how much customers value a product — and ethics aside, it makes sense that N95s would cost more “because consumers have a higher valuation for them at present.”
“Sure, you want to take advantage of the higher customer valuation, but you don't want to exploit or abuse the customer, and especially when it's something like” a global health crisis, said Dholakia, who teaches in the graduate business school.
According to sales documents provided to the oil company by Hatfield and Co., the cash price for a million masks was $6,310,000. If the oil company wanted to pay within 30 days, it would have to cough up another $100,000 — for a total of $6,410,000, according to the document.But the company could only use credit for one of the orders.
“The second order would need to be cash upon receipt of goods,” a Hatfield and Co. salesperson wrote in a letter of terms to the oil company.
The company also offered to share “live video” showing the product in the warehouse, a provision that the industry salesperson with knowledge of the transaction found bizarre and unprecedented.
“That’s never happened,” the person said. “How do I know the video is real?”
The salesperson said whoever got a hold of the masks “found a way to make money and, you know, I mean, that is the American entrepreneurial way. I just feel like this is not the time to do it."
In the wake of his arrest for holding packed services at his church in Tampa, Florida, Pastor Rodney Howard-Brown says he's now the target of death threats.
During a Facebook Live broadcast, Howard-Brown blamed the threats on “religious bigotry and hatred" in the media, also claiming that someone fired gun shots at his church's sign.
"The media are stirring up every kind of religious bigotry and hatred right now," he said. "People firing shots last night at the church sign from the highway. We went this morning there was no bullet holes. We did report it but the police say unless you can show where the bullet landed, but I mean the guys, security were there. They could hear the gun going off and then the death threats, to the ministry and to the staff. It’s beyond the pale. So people have basically, literally lost their ever-loving minds."
As The Christian Post points out, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office arrested Howard-Brown at his home Monday afternoon for "intentionally and repeatedly" hosting packed church services in defiance of stay-at-home orders set in place by President Trump, the Gov. of Florida, the CDC and the Hillsborough County Emergency Policy Group.
Sometime in the late second century A.D., Christians in the city of Rome organized a collection to send to the followers of Jesus in the city of Corinth.
Modern-day scholars don’t know what the crisis was that prompted the donation – it could have been a plague or a famine. What they do know from fragments of a letter sent by the Corinthian bishop, Dionysios, is that a large sum of money was shipped to Corinth.
As a scholar of early Christianity, I have written about this act of generosity. At a time when countries across the globe are struggling to fight the coronavirus and its economic impact, I argue modern society could learn from the actions of these early Christians.
Sharing resources
Some of the earliest Christian texts, written in the first and second centuries A.D., even before the time of Dionysios, show evidence for the pooling of economic resources.
The letters of the apostle Paul, written during the first century, are among the earliest sources for Christian life. These letters frequentlydiscuss aid that Paul and his followers collected in Greece and Turkey. The aid was intended for the “saints” in Jerusalem – likely a group of early followers of Jesus.
Paul says in his letters that the purpose of the aid was to “remember the poor” in Jerusalem.
Scholars debate whether Paul hoped to help a community in financial need or to show Jewish followers of Jesus in Jerusalem that Paul’s gentile converts were real members of the Jesus movement.
Paul got contributions from multiple cities and regions. But this was the exception rather than the rule. The pooling of resources and their use among the early Christians were generally directed locally.
Later literary evidence provides many examples of local charity.
The second-century “Acts of the Apostles,” which provides a history of the early church, contains legends about Jesus’ apostles shortly after his death. One such story describes how Jesus’ followers organized a commune in Jerusalem soon after his death. Members relinquished property rights and shared everything in common.
Similarly, the “Pastoral Epistles,” a collection of letters from the second century, speak of a fund that entitled widows, provided they were over 60 and had no other family to support them, to financial support from the community.
Two texts written by Roman Christians in the second century, the “Shepherd of Hermas” and the “First Apology” of Justin Martyr, a Christian philosopher, show that local groups in the city collected offerings from their members that could be used for the common good.
Literature from this period shows that local, organized groups were common in ancient cities, ranging from burial societies, to guilds, to devotees of particular gods. Members of these groups paid dues that helped to fund burials, communal meals and other social activities.
These groups provided community, but also helped to manage risk.
A collection for Corinth
By the end of the second century, a network of Christian groups in Rome had begun directing some of their local capital toward non-local needs. This included helping Christians who had been sent to the mines, which may have been linked to persecution of Christian communities.
This network also provided financial support for impoverished Christian groups in other cities.
Dionysios wrote a number of letters to Christian communities in the eastern Mediterranean regarding matters relating to theology, sexual practice and persecution of Christians. Fragments of these letters survive in the accounts of Eusebius, a fourth-century Christian historian.
Dionysios’ letter to the Romans mentions the financial aid that was collected in Rome and sent to Corinth.
The ruins of Corinth show that there might have been a plague or another disaster.
Archaeological remains from Corinth around this time speak to a heightened concern over health. During this period, healing deities appeared for the first time on local Corinthian coinage. It was during this time that the first inscriptions honoring doctors appeared.
There may have been fears of a plague, or an economic downturn in the city. The archaeological record indicates a marked drop in imports to the city at this time. Regardless of the cause, Corinth’s Christian community found itself in trouble.
When a network of Christians in Rome learned about the situation in Corinth, a local leader named Soter organized a collection to provide aid, according to Dionysios. Thanking the Romans for their gift, Dionysios speaks about how the gift was part of a longer tradition in this network of Roman Christians:
“For from the beginning this has been a custom for you, always acting as a benefactor to siblings in various ways and sending financial support to many assemblies in every city, thus relieving the need of those in want and supplying additional help to the siblings who are in the mines.”
A network of support
This story offers a window into an early shift occurring within some forms of early Christianity.
While early Christians had formed networks that provided for hospitality and the sharing of news, ideas, and texts, sharing money was definitely not the norm in the second century.
For example, news, ideas, and texts moved through the network of Ignatius of Antioch, the bishop of Antioch in the middle of the second century. However, despite the fact that the community in Antioch was experiencing distress, financial help was not offered.
Dionysios’ letter is an indication of how some early Christian networks had begun to grow extensive and stable enough to direct their resources both to local and non-local needs.
Further, this could happen because members of this network of Christian associations thought of themselves as “siblings,” as family. Sibling – or, in Greek, adelphos - was the name most frequently used by Christians for members of their associations.
Christians and crises
This impulse to channel care into the wider world during a crisis appears to stands in sharp contrast to what a few high-profile American Christians have said in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Conservative political commentator, Glenn Beck, who has spoken often of his faith, urged the government not to sacrifice the economy for the sake of protecting the vulnerable, elderly, and immunocompromised.
On his March 24 radio show, Beck said, “I would rather have my children stay home and all of us who are over 50 go in and keep this economy going and working even if we all get sick. I’d rather die than kill the country. ’Cause it’s not the economy that’s dying, it’s the country.”
According to polling by the Pew Research Center released on March 19, a majority of white evangelicals believe “that the crisis has been blown out of proportion by the media.”
This stands in contrast to the impulse among some early Christians, and, no doubt, many modern Christians as well. In times of crisis, they sought to connect and share.
Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, on Sunday defended calling the novel coronavirus outbreak "contained" just days before large swaths of the country were forced to shelter inside their homes.
In an interview on ABC's This Week, host Martha Raddatz asked the White House adviser why he was predicting "weeks, not months" of economic turmoil due to the global pandemic.
"How can you be sure this economic tragedy won't be longterm if there's not a guarantee people will have jobs to return to?" Raddatz said. "I don't see how it can be just weeks."
"Well, listen, I say that -- weeks -- it could be four weeks, it could be eight weeks," Kudlow replied. "I say that hopefully and I say that prayerfully. That's what some of the science experts have been telling us. I don't know if they'll be right."
Raddatz interrupted to point out that Kudlow had called the COVID-19 outbreak "contained" in an interview on CNBC.
"It was just a month ago you told CNBC that you thought the virus was contained in the country even though doctors were warning otherwise," Raddatz observed. "You also downplayed the threat of a long-lasting economic tragedy."
"Why should people trust you?" the ABC News host wondered.
"I'm as good as the facts are," Kudlow replied. "And at the time I made the statement, the facts were [that the virus was] contained, the president had just put the travel restrictions on China. And a lot of people agreed with me. A lot of people felt that the flu was worse than this virus."
"But as soon as the facts changed, we changed our whole posture," he insisted
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