COVID-19 denying Virginia musician-minister Landon Spradlin has died of COVID-19 apparently contracted during a visit to New Orleans.
Please pause before snarking
Spradlin, 66, of Gretna, Va., was inducted in 2016 into the Blues Hall of Fame.
“The singer with a powerful soul-blues voice was a fine guiarist as well, who spent more time as a traveling music minister than a nightspot shouter in recent years,” the Roanoke Times reported.
He first became ill while in New Orleans, according to the newspaper, and heading home with his wife, was forced to seek medical help near Charlotte, N.C., where he was diagnosed with the new coronavirus. He died on March 25.
His wife is now in quarantine.
New Orleans has become the latest a “hot spot” for the disease, likely due to Mardi Gras.
On Facebook, Spradlin was associated with two organizations: New Wave Ministries and Landon Spradlin Music.
One eulogist called him ”a modern-day Apostle Paul.”
According to The Friendly Atheist, Spradlin and his band seem to have been performing in the crowded venue of what he called his “Jackson Square Ministry” from about Feb. 21 through March 10. around Jackson Square. Mardi Gras itself was Feb. 25. “Many were touched by the power and love of Jesus,” Spradlin wrote.
Spradlin had heard of the coronavirus but didn’t believe it was any actual threat.
On March 13 Spradlin posted on Facebook what appeared to be a screenshot of an meme originally posted on Instagram by a black woman named Tiffany Fay, implying that COVID-19 was merely an instance of mass hysteria.
“Do you all see how the media can manipulate your life?” the meme said.
(BTW I was unable to locate any such actual account on Instagram. Was this another layer of fakery?)
Spradlin also posted an anecdote about a missionary who allegedly was able to minister to plague victims without becoming sick himself.
The lie that COVID-19 is merely an excuse to attack Donald Trump and ruin his campaign for re-election has been circulating among Trumpists for weeks.
Disinformation killed this man.
Understand, I didn’t know Spradlin and don’t hold him up as any holier or better than thou.
As a man or even a musician.
Just as a human being, with a wife and five children -- and as one victim of the Trump-loving culture of lies.
If the truth instead of self-serving lies had been told from the first, from the bully pulpit, he might well still be walking around.
There will be more victims. Many more. Including victims who have never believed a word of the lies themselves.
(The devil) was a murderer from the beginning...When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
--John 8:44
Sample (Spradlin is the guy on the right):