Despite that pretty much every school in the United States has closed campuses and is offering classes online in order to encourage social distancing and help flatten the curve, Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, is super duper “pro-life,” and he’s encouraging students to come back to class as well as requiring professors to do so.
Apparently no major health pandemic can stop him from teaching kids to hate gays.
Via The Richmond Times-Dispatch:
In an interview Sunday night, Falwell said somewhere between several hundred to more than 5,000 students are expected to live in campus dorms, where they will continue coursework online rather than in classrooms.
Meanwhile, hundreds of professors and instructors without a valid health exemption will come to campus to hold office hours.
“I think we have a responsibility to our students — who paid to be here, who want to be here, who love it here — to give them the ability to be with their friends, to continue their studies, enjoy the room and board they’ve already paid for and to not interrupt their college life,” Falwell said.
Not only is this selfish and perfectly in keeping with today’s anti-science Republicans, but it’s criminally dangerous considering the dearth of healthcare infrastructure in Virginia. Although officials in Virginia will not say how many ventilators they have, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports they only have 2.1 hospital beds per 1,000 people, lower than the national average of 2.8 per 1000, which is actually lower than the 3.1 beds per 1000 they have in Italy, a country that was obscenely overwhelmed by Covid-19 cases.
But hey — Jerry Fallwell must have gone to the same prestigious medical school as Trump since they clearly know more than all the scientists and doctors.