If you're still trying to avoid Covid while 99.9% of the world are trying to share it directly with you, you have my utmost respect.
It's exhausting, I know it's exhausting.
And it's isolating, and it's thankless, and it's unceasing.
You're doing it in opposition to the will of family.
You're doing it in opposition to the will of friends.
You're doing it in opposition to the will of your employers, and the media, and your government.
For some of you, you are certain that this is a question of life and death - yours, or those you love.
For some of you, this is a question of right and wrong.
You may have been mocked, shunned, patronised, dismissed, belittled, humiliated, bullied.
You may have been asked the hardest of questions.
You may have been put in impossible situations.
But you're still going.
Because you know that you can reduce the risk of infection.
And you know that it's worth avoiding infection.
And as long as those two facts remain constant, you know that it's right to try to not catch it and not spread it.
Whether you're doing this out of desperation, or hope, or strength, or fear, or courage, or you don't know how you're doing it, you have my respect, and love.
Before a service this week, a congregation member gathered his courage to tell me that I shouldn't live in a spirit of fear, presumably referring to my respirator.
I completed the verse for him, and told him that no, I have instead been given love, power, and self discipline.
Self discipline.
Self control.
Power.
Love
The strength and determination to resist peer pressure and stand for what is right.
Instead of a spirit of selfishness, weakness, and indiscipline.
I'm not sure I understand.
Is Balloux claiming he was in favour of children getting vaccinated against Covid?
As far as I could tell he was just in favour of the lot of them getting repeatedly infected.
Bog standard epidemiology, apparently.
He said this when 95% of children under 11 were unvaccinated.