Friday, January 28, 2022

Did Mormon missionaries infect remote pacific islanders with Covid-19?

Is this article a case of when journalists espouse their ideological narratives or give in to stereotypes? Quite possible! Narrative: White missionaries bring misery to native people.

The below story was promptly picked up by the leftist Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Global Health Now newsletter: "COVID-19 has finally hit one of the last uninfected places—the remote Pacific archipelago of Kiribati—after missionaries who had left the island were allowed to come home this month."

"... Kiribati finally began reopening this month, allowing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to charter a plane to bring home 54 of the island nation’s citizens. Many of those aboard were missionaries who had left Kiribati before the border closure to spread the faith abroad for what is commonly known as the Mormon church.
Officials tested each returning passenger three times in nearby Fiji, required that they be vaccinated, and put them in quarantine with additional testing when they arrived home.
It wasn’t enough.
More than half the passengers tested positive for the virus, which has now slipped out into the community and prompted the government to declare a state of disaster. An initial 36 positive cases from the flight had ballooned to 181 cases by Friday. ..."

COVID hits one of the last uninfected places on the planet | AP News

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