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SACRAMENTO, California, May 8, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has claimed that his state will only get back to normal once a coronavirus vaccine has been developed.
As reported by SFGATE, Newsom said during a press conference on Tuesday that the Golden State was “not going back to normal” anytime soon. “It’s a new normal with adaptations and modifications, until we get to immunity and a vaccine.”
It could take years for a vaccine to be fully developed and produced in the quantities needed within the United States. Following Newsom’s logic, the state of emergency would have to continue for that amount of time, as well.
Bill Gates, whose foundation is heavily involved in funding the research to create a coronavirus vaccine, said a vaccine would be ready next year, at the earliest. “Like America’s top public health officials, I say that it is likely to be 18 months, even though it could be as short as nine months or closer to two years,” he wrote.
Pro-life and conservative activists have raised concerns about the pro-abortion, pro-contraception Gates Foundation’s role in the coronavirus response. Bill Gates has also said he thinks life won’t go back to “normal” until the population is “widely vaccinated” and that “eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.”
Gates has also funded Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) research that floated the idea of embedding vaccine records “directly into the skin” of children.
“Along with the vaccine, a child would be injected with a bit of dye that is invisible to the naked eye but easily seen with a special cell-phone filter, combined with an app that shines near-infrared light onto the skin,” an article in Scientific American explained. “The dye would be expected to last up to five years, according to tests on pig and rat skin and human skin in a dish.”
The idea was “funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,” Scientific American explained, and it “came about because of a direct request from Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates himself, who has been supporting efforts to wipe out diseases such as polio and measles across the world.”
Concerns about vaccines made using cells from aborted babies
Some Catholic leaders and pro-life activists have raised concerns about any potential vaccines made using cell lines from aborted babies.
In March, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Johnson & Johnson) was granted more than $456 million in federal funding for their vaccine project using the PER C6 cell line, which comes from retinal tissue from an aborted baby.
On April 17, Archbishop of Kansas City and U.S. bishops’ head of pro-life activities Joseph Naumann, Bishop John Doerfler of Marquette, and Archbishop of Oklahoma City Paul Coakley, along with pro-life leaders from around the United States, sent an open letter to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about this issue.
“To be clear, we strongly support efforts to develop an effective, safe, and widely available vaccine as quickly as possible,” they wrote. “However, we also strongly urge our federal government to ensure that fundamental moral principles are followed in the development of such vaccines, most importantly, the principle that human life is sacred and should never be exploited.”
Bishop Joseph Strickland released a pastoral letter asking faithful Catholics to join him in helping to bring to a “halt” any development of a coronavirus vaccine derived from aborted babies.
“Tragically, people are not aware of or have chosen to turn a blind eye to the advances in medical science which allow vaccines to be developed with the wholesale use of aborted children’s bodies,” the bishop of Tyler in Northeast Texas wrote on April 23.
He admitted that “until recently, I knew very little about” the use “stem cells from aborted babies in developing vaccines.”
Strickland stressed that just because “the crime of abortion is considered legal in our nation does not mean it is morally permissible to use the dead bodies of these children to cure a global pandemic. Emphatically, this practice is evil.”
“As your Shepherd,” the bishop wrote, “I urge you to join me, NOW, in passionately but prayerfully speaking out against this practice. As I said in the beginning of this letter, I will help you navigate this storm as best as I can.”
“I ask you to join your voices with mine in an effort to bring to a halt [this] reality.”
“We must insist that legislators create legislation which establishes the illegal and immoral nature of any use of the remains of aborted babies for research,” he added. “Further, we must insist that pharmaceutical companies comply with such legislation. I believe this can be a significant building block in a culture of life which eliminates the taint of economic gain that too easily infects the abortion industry.”
Californians say they’re facing ‘authoritarian overreach’
People all across California have protested Newsom’s stay-at-home orders.
“Hundreds of people – likely more than 1,000 – crowded around the California State Capitol” in Sacramento, reported the Los Angeles Times.
As the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out, protesters were comprised of “a wide swath of political factions, including struggling business owners, flag-waving supporters of President Trump and religious conservatives. Still, for all the movement’s array of supporters, its organizing muscle has been activists against mandatory childhood vaccinations.”
Christian groups within the Golden State have been suing the government for not being able to gather for religious purposes.
Pastor Jon Duncan of Cross Culture Christian Center in Lodi, California, just south of the state’s capital, emphasized that “[w]e can’t allow urgency to suspend liberty – otherwise freedom is a false promise. This is not the America that I know. This is authoritarian overreach.”
“Fundamental and unalienable rights are, by their very nature, ‘essential,’” the complaint filed by the pastor explained. “Yet the State of California has, in a sweeping abuse of its power, criminalized all religious assembly and communal religious worship while allowing citizens to gather at a liquor store, pot-dispensary, Planned Parenthood, Walmart, CVS, Costco, Home Depot, and many other locations which are deemed ‘essential.’”
So far, just over 60,000 people in California tested positive for the coronavirus. The state is reporting about 2,500 deaths, almost 80 percent of which were men and women older than 65 years.