Superstition will get us in the end

I read that the epicenter of the huge spike in COVID-19 cases in Korea (the largest outside of China) emanates from a fringe religious sect called the "Shincheonji Church". The sect is Christian in character and like superstitious sects the world over clearly attracts a certain "mind-set". Apparently patient zero was a 61 year old Woman who refused to be admitted to hospital and instead attended several religious gatherings where the disease was transmitted. 

Unfortunately in this case it seems as though her arrogant and ignorant attitude that "Jesus (or insert whatever imaginary deity you like here) will save me" has put a huge number of people at risk. Viruses don't care what wacky shit you believe, they're just genetic robots that will do what their bio-chemistry dictates they must do, which is to hijack our eukaryotic cell replication mechanism killing the cell in the process, 1st century Jewish mystics or greedy Korean hucksters claiming to be the second coming of said mystics simply don't enter into it.

In another travesty of ignorance it seems that the original animal incubator of this new strain of Corona virus may well have come from the much abused Pangolin. This is an animal that is prized in Asia for it's scales and being essentially a scaly anteater has quite a few. The scales are used for that ultimate bastion of confirmation-bias "Chinese medicine" or in other words an industry founded on ignorant superstition and fueled by greed and snake-oil. The Pangolin is on the brink of extinction, as are many of the animals having the misfortune of being valued by this utterly bankrupt and vile trade.

So, superstition of two different flavours contributing to significantly helping to (potentially) kill millions of people, let's hope the Korean outbreak can be controlled and the good weather arrives before we have a pandemic to deal with. Anyway, make a mental note, when someone tries to convince you that their particular superstition is "harmless", perhaps challenge the point and use these two examples as evidence to the contrary.