LifeSite’s previous (and future) live updates on the coronavirus crisis and how it relates to issues our readers care about can be viewed HERE.
April 7, 2020, 7:17 p.m. EST: On April 4, the Times of San Diego reported:
Citations were issued to 22 people found near the beach in Encinitas in violation of San Diego County’s stay-at-home order, authorities announced Saturday morning.
The tickets were issued Friday to people who “were watching the sunset, having picnics near the beach,” according to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.
“Everyone is required to stay home, except to get food, care for a relative or friend, get necessary health care or go to an essential job,” the department tweeted Saturday morning. “Complacency is the enemy. Take social distancing more seriously to stop coronavirus.”
The violations carry fines of up to $1,000 or six months in jail or both, the department said.
Alpha News reports that at least eight people in Minnesota have been “charged with violating Governor Tim Walz’s stay at home order, an offense that could earn them up to 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.” The offenders included a man “playing cards with three friends in the bar that he owns” even though the bar was closed to the public “and police say the door was locked as the friends played cards privately,” and a woman “visiting her storage unit and purchasing food.”
An editor at Spiked revealed Sunday that while momentarily resting on a bench in London’s Hyde Park – he had been out cycling – a policeman with a “perfect sneer” questioned him.
“I get the impression he has been waiting his entire jobsworth’s life to be able to reprimand someone for sitting on a park bench and writing a text message. ‘I’ve been cycling and walking and now I’m resting for a couple of minutes’, I say, horrified by my own words; horrified that I am having to explain perfectly lawful, perfectly safe behaviour to an agent of the state as if I were in the Soviet Union rather than sitting by the Serpentine in the heart of London. ‘Well, move on’, he says, balefully and gleefully, like a character from a Kafka novel,” Brendan O’Neil wrote.
“Middle-class busybodies and jobsworth cops are ruining this country,” the subhead of his article read.
April 7, 2020, 6:55 p.m. EST: At the White House’s daily coronavirus briefing today, which is still going on (watch here), Trump signaled that he is open to the idea of defunding the World Health Organization, a pro-abortion U.N. entity with suspicious ties to communist China.
“They seem to err always on the side of China and we fund it, so I want to look into it,” he said.
A reporter pressed him, “Is it time to freeze [U.S.] funding to the WHO during a pandemic?”
“No, maybe not, I am not saying that I am going to do it, but we are going to look at it,” Trump replied. “We are going to investigate it, we are going to look into it… but we will look at ending funding because you know what, they called it wrong and if you look back over the years even, they’re very much – everything seems to be very biased towards China – that's not right.”
Breitbart and Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported:
Locals in Wuhan, where the Chinese coronavirus pandemic originated, have heard screams coming from funeral home furnaces, and some treated in hospitals say they saw workers put living coronavirus patients in body bags…
RFA noted that it could not independently verify that the Chinese Communist Party was burning coronavirus patients alive, nor has the Communist Party confirmed or denied the rumors. Yet the rumors persist that, to make room for new patients in Wuhan’s overcrowded hospitals, medical staff chose older patients less likely to survive the infection and shipped them to incinerators while they were still alive and conscious.
RFA quoted a source “close to the funeral industry” identified only as Ma who said that he had heard reports of “people restrained and forced into body bags when they were still moving.”
April 7, 2020, 2:13 p.m. EST: A Russian Catholic bishop has tested positive for the coronavirus. Bishop Clemens Pickel of the St. Clement Diocese of Saratov wrote to his flock, “Dear Brothers and Sisters, Today (6.04) I was informed that my blood test for Coronavirus is positive. For that reason I am fully self-isolated at my home in Saratov, and will be unable to preside over the liturgical celebration of the Sacred Easter Triduum in the Cathedral. I don’t have the symptoms of the disease. I feel good. Still, I thank you for your prayers, which unite us into one big family in our Diocese. With love in Christ, Your bishop Clemens.” (Translation provided by a friend of LifeSite)
April 7, 2020, 9:18 a.m. EST: Below are some other articles LifeSite ran on the coronavirus crisis yesterday:
- Franklin Graham’s explanation for pandemic: ‘Man has turned his back on God’
- New York Times author doubles down in blaming Trump, Christians for pandemic
- Hulk Hogan tweets Bible verse, shares message calling for penance during coronavirus
- Liberal elites are already planning a post-corona world that leaves God, faith far behind
April 6, 2020, 7:47 p.m. EST: In a lengthy interview with CBS, Bill Gates – whose foundation along with 15 global business, government, and public health leaders co-sponsored an October 2019 simulation exercise based on responding to an international “coronavirus” pandemic – suggested until people are “widely vaccinated,” life will not return to “normal.”
In San Francisco, the first person to be ticketed for violating a municipal shelter-in-place order implemented because of the coronavirus was an 86-year-old grandfather praying outside an abortion center.
Watch Trump’s daily coronavirus briefing, which is only now wrapping up, here.
April 6, 2020, 7:27 p.m. EST: Panama’s Archbishop Jose Domingo Ulloa flew over Panama City in a helicopter with the Blessed Sacrament on Sunday.
A beautiful photo of a priest standing on a rooftop blessing Paris with the Eucharist in a monstrance has generated buzz.
Priest blessing the city of Paris with the Blessed Sacrament from the roof of Saint Francis Xavier's church pic.twitter.com/SdRMkBbbkG
— Pius (@AdhucTecumSum) April 3, 2020
April 6, 2020, 3:28 p.m. EST: Boris Johnson is now in intensive care.
April 6, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – There are three big pieces of coronavirus news out of the United Kingdom this morning.
The first is that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who announced over a week ago that he has the coronavirus, has now been hospitalized.
“I’m in good spirits and keeping in touch with my team,” he tweeted.
Last night, on the advice of my doctor, I went into hospital for some routine tests as I’m still experiencing coronavirus symptoms. I’m in good spirits and keeping in touch with my team, as we work together to fight this virus and keep everyone safe.
— Boris Johnson #StayHomeSaveLives (@BorisJohnson) April 6, 2020
Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer Catherine Calderwood resigned “after she flouted her own advice to stay at home to fight the spread of the coronavirus by travelling to her second home on two successive weekends,” Reuters reports.
And Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II gave an address via a rare video message, something she typically only does on Christmas. She thanked National Health Service (NHS) workers and “those of you who are staying at home, thereby helping to protect the vulnerable and sparing many families the pain already felt by those who have lost loved ones.”
“I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge,” she said. “And those who come after us will say that the Britons of this generation were as strong as any. That the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good-humored resolve and of fellow-feeling still characterize this country. The pride in who we are is not a part of our past, it defines our present and our future.”
The Queen referenced “the very first broadcast I made, in 1940” with her sister: “We, as children, spoke from here at Windsor to children who had been evacuated from their homes and sent away for their own safety” during World War II.
More details about David Benham’s arrest in North Carolina over the weekend are here. Benham, who with his twin brother famously had an HGTV show cancelled over the duo’s biblical understanding of sexuality, was praying outside an abortion facility, allegedly a violation of a “stay-at-home” order.
LifeSiteNews will be live-streaming President Donald Trump’s daily briefing at 5:00 p.m. EST.
In its $2 billion coronavirus funding plan, the United Nations has labeled abortion “essential.”
Other LifeSiteNews coverage of the coronavirus crisis so far today includes:
- A Catholic’s guide to confession, perfect contrition, general absolution during pandemic
- New York AG leads fight for abortions in Texas following coronavirus restrictions
- Story of man who died eating fish tank cleaner hoping to cure COVID-19 makes no sense
- Former royal chaplain says UK bishops spearheaded coronavirus church closures
- The spiritual vision shepherds need if they’re to help Catholics weather coronavirus storm