People often claim that religions are harmless, I suppose for the most part in every-day life they are, but in the hands of the wrong people they can be lethal tools of misinformation and harm. Take the (late) President of Tanzania, John Magufuli, he appeared to be a deeply deluded man and his position as the leader of a country made him and his religion deeply dangerous. At the outset of the pandemic he advised his fellow countrymen to go to churches to pray (a stupid thing to do in the middle of a respiratory virus pandemic!) he made claims like, "Coronavirus is the devil and cannot survive in the body of Christ" (WTF?) and that the virus had been eradicated from Tanzania because of "three days of prayer"! Guess what, it hadn't, and reports from the opposition party in that country are suggesting that he died of Covid 19 this week. Of course, any death from this disease is a tragedy, but, in this case you can't help thinking that this man's legacy will be his delusional and dangerous attitude toward a simple virus! All we're left wondering is how many people he killed, or will kill with his religiously inspired ignorance.
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