Sandy Brown, a 40-year-old woman, prayed and prayed and prayed to be able to have a child after she went through two painful miscarriages with her husband of 15 years at the time. Finally, she was able to have a healthy baby boy. They named him Freddie Brown III after his dad, whose name was Freddie Brown Jr. The young boy grew up loved by everyone around him. “He was sweet and shy but had a funny sense of humor” and “he was always positive” his mother recalls in an article by The Detroit News. He dreamed of being a football player at Michigan State. He had his entire life in front of him. But at only 20 years old, he lost his father. Just three days later, he lost his own life too. Sandy now has to mourn the loss for the people closest to her with unbearable grief for the rest of her life. She did not even get to have a proper funeral. What took the lives of the two carefree boys was the COVID-19 pandemic. As of May 2021, COVID-19 has stolen the lives of more than three million people. There are countless stories just like Freddie’s, yet people still claim there is no pandemic, one of them being John MacArthur, a pastor from Los Angeles, California. On August 30th, MacArthur gave a speech to his church, Grace Community Church, stating that “there is no pandemic.” He has continued to use insane conspiracy theories and make incorrect claims, such as saying COVID-19 is just another flu, that not many people have died, that those who have passed died from other illnesses, that data is incorrect, and even going as far as saying it’s the government’s plot to control Christians. Despite the number of cases and deaths, he has continued to defy health guidelines and claim these insane claims. In the video, John MacArthur makes multiple false claims about COVID-19, supporting his claims with twisted evidence and false information about COVID-19, supporting his claims with twisted evidence and false information.

1: “A rather telling report came out this week and for the first time we heard the truth. The CDC, the Centers for Disease Control […] said that in truth, 6% of the deaths that have occurred can be directly attributable to COVID.” (0:57-1:35)

MacArthur claims the CDC has finally for the first time, given us the truth. The truth being that of all the deaths that have happened, only 6% of the deaths happened because of COVID, 94% not. MacArthur is not the first to claim this. Donald Trump, the now-former president of the United States retweeted a tweet by Mel Q on Twitter claiming “this week the CDC quietly updated the Covid number to admit that only 6% of all the 153,504 deaths recorded actually died from Covid. That’s 9,210 deaths. The other 94% had 2 to 3 other serious illnesses.” The tweet was later taken down by Twitter because it contains false information. This claim is flat out wrong and dangerously misleading, especially because many of Trump’s supporters continue to resonate with this claim, even to this day.

In an article by Live Science, Dr. William Hanage, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard University’s public school of health, says many who have passed already had nonfatal diseases, such as heart disease or even something as small as asthma, which worsened COVID once it had been contracted, as well as COVID worsening those comorbidities. The truth is simply that those who had nonfatal diseases would not have died if they had not gotten COVID. Hanage’s statement is correct, as the CDC says for “6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned.” In other words, the 6% statistic relates to the people who died without any underlying conditions, the rest being people who died that happened to have underlying or previous health conditions.

In the same article by Live Science, Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee agreed with Hanage’s previous statement. Schaffner says someone who passed away without those underlying conditions is actually a “severe pneumonia, caused by the virus, which is then exacerbated by a person’s own immune and inflammatory response.”

2: “Of the 160,000 people that have died, 9,210 actually died from COVID. There is no pandemic.” (1:37-1:49)

He is saying of the supposed 160,000 people that have passed away, only 9,120 of those people actually died because of COVID, which is quite a huge jump and is still too many people for him to say “there is no pandemic.” He says there is no pandemic and then uses evidence, which happens to be incorrect and ultimately proves him wrong, to support his false statement. This already shows how unreliable he is and that you can’t trust any of his information. He most likely had gotten this claim from the tweet by Mel Q that Donald Trump retweeted and can be tied back to the inaccurate 6% statistic claim. 

In the article by Live Science, it says these people formed this incorrect claim from an update the CDC gave, where they showed a breakdown of the comorbidities and contributing causes of death for those who have died on August 26th, hence where the 6% statistic came from. Just the Monday after he gave this speech, it was a firm fact that 6 million people were infected. Additionally, 700,000 of the 6 million cases, which is 11.7%, happened to be in California, the state where MacArthur resides. An article by Religion News Service states MacArthur’s claim is flat-out wrong, saying “an estimated 184,000 Americans have died from [COVID-19]. When recording the reasons for a patient’s death, doctors list all factors leading to the person’s demise — but the virus remains the main reason they died.” 

3: “We’ve all been suspicious of the fact that we’ve been meeting together now for weeks […] and we don’t know anyone who’s ill, nobody in our congregations ever been to the hospital with this.” (2:22-2:33)

It is known that many, and possibly most, religious places followed public health guidelines by doing services online, but MacArthur decided to do the opposite and continue holding services in person. He claims that because no one in his church community has gotten COVID, that must mean COVID is not as big of a threat, or not even real. This is a lie as many people who have been in his congregation have gotten COVID and may have been hospitalized or even died because of it. According to an account in an interview by MacArthur in April of 2020, members of his church, or people that visited it, have actually been hospitalized because of COVID multiple times.

An article by Los Angeles Times states many people contracted COVID including “a young couple who were hospitalized and a visiting pastor who died of the disease shortly after attending a church conference in March.” That is not it though. It was later revealed a “90-year-old Russian pastor who attended the church’s annual Shepherds’ Conference in March, which drew 3,500 men from around the world, became infected” and later died from COVID two weeks after being at the conference. MacArthur tried to defend this by saying that he is the only person who fell sick to COVID after attending the conference, but this is false as well because “another man from Washington church went and he developed symptoms and died of COVID on April 1st. Another pastor who attended also got COVID and was hospitalized for 49 days but luckily recovered. The reality that he lied about members being ill continues to show how unreliable he truly is. 

4: “It’s clear to us the fabrication of numbers because they’re including people who had 2 or 3 comorbidities, we know all of that.” (2:36-2:44)

He says they are “fabricating” or coming up with more deaths to make the death toll seem larger because they include the deaths of those who had comorbidities. Yes, it is true that many of the deaths included in the death toll from COVID did have comorbidities, but this does not mean they did not die from COVID and it does not mean everyone that died from COVID had comorbidities. An article from Reuters states “though pre-existing conditions have contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans infected with the novel coronavirus, this is not the case for all those who have lost their lives to the disease. Moreover, COVID-19 was still what caused the deaths of those with underlying health issues.”

Dr. Marc Larsen, an emergency physician who serves as Incident Command Operations Chair for COVID-19 at St. Luke’s hospital in Kansas City, said when they file death certificates, they use a standard format and they have to list the primary cause of death as well as other contributing factors. Reuters also states not all “COVID-19 victims had underlying health conditions and those who did still died because of COVID-19. The new coronavirus is not ‘just another type of flu.’” This disproves many things MacArthur has said about COVID, which has been summed up in the article from Los Angeles Times: “The mainstream media have overhyped the pandemic; that not that many people have died and the data are wrong, and those who did succumb actually died from other illnesses; that it’s really just the flu — and saying it’s all the government’s ploy to control Christians.”

5: “It’s not a surprise to me that in the midst of all this deception, the great effort that is going on is to shut down churches that preach the gospel.” (3:00-3:12)

He seems to say in the midst of all this deception during the pandemic, the main attempt is to shut down churches and people that preach the gospel. Just because the fact that several states have offered religious exemptions from any health guidelines during this pandemic proves his claim wrong. Many religious practices in various states have continued to be held in person despite any laws or guidelines that may be in place as well, which is described in a list of states from Centers for American Progress. Despite the high number of cases and deaths, they explain many states such as New York, New Jersey, Arizona, Texas, Florida, and Pennsylvania have all defied health guidelines that may have been in place or possibly even been given exemptions. From the list of states that have been given exemptions or went against health guidelines, these specific states have the highest number of recorded deaths in the United States as of May 10, 2021, ranging from 17,000-54,000 total deaths, says NBC News, but tons of other states not listed have also defied guidelines or been given exemptions at one point or another.

Many states have also considered religious entities essential, says Center for American Progress. As stated in an article by Christianity Today, it is known California considers “faith based services that are provided through streaming or other technology” an essential function, which happens to be where MacArthur lives. The fact that many states have given exemptions and others have started holding services online proves no one is trying to “shut down churches that preach the gospel” as MacArthur says. It is actually frightening how many officials are ignoring health warnings and are not closing places of worship, says Centers for American Progress. They observe giving exemptions could actually worsen the crisis at hand, declaring that “[e]stablishing religious exemptions—in this case, by freeing houses of worship from public health order compliance—will only result in more cases of COVID-19 and greater numbers of death from the disease.” It is proven possible to hold services and be a good religious person from home as many churches and people that have followed the guidelines are.

Conclusion

These wildly false claims made by John MacArthur are extremely relevant, especially because thousands of people attend Grace Community Church, sometimes as high as 3,500 people on any given day. The people who attend his church continue to receive this information and think it’s true. What John MacArthur is claiming is not true. There is a pandemic. People are dying. People have died. It is terrifying and threatening, and people are scared, but that does not excuse the lies and deception. There are going to be more people like MacArthur. There already have been people like MacArthur, who are spreading incorrect information, which is incredibly dangerous. There needs to be more correct information out there, and MacArthur is doing nothing to help. It is okay to be scared of both the knowable and unknowable, but it is not okay to spread false and twisted evidence, claims, and information.

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Featured image screenshotted from video