In Which I Consider the Propriety of Tying a Bandanna Around My Head and Coming Off the Top Ropes

Idaho is now in lockdown statewide — with 136 total cases and zero deaths, with more than half our counties with zero cases, and with (as far as has been reported) only one hospitalization. This is insanity. It’s also incompetence; the text of the lockdown order is logically and linguistically incomprehensible in places, cowardly in others (church services are necessarily banned, but they won’t just come out and say so), and unenforceable (and therefore high-handed) in others. But the governor presumably must do this to quell the panic, which is mostly media-driven; your average Idahoan has more sense of proportion than government leaders and the media. No one with a public profile is willing to ask if the economic disaster for everyday people is justified and, if it is, why we’ve never behaved this way before in similar enough situations.

And so I appreciate Wilson’s reminder that not only the virus but the panic and the incompetence are all from God and are no ultimate threat.

It would be hard for me to truly express how much I disagree with this article. Look at what is happening in NYC right now, and is likely to continue to get much worse. Hospitals in my area in PA are already running out of supplies and requesting people from the community to provide anything they can to help.

The lockdowns are intended to prevent the exponential spread of sickness, especially in places where there is currently little sickness. Ease up restrictions and it will spread so fast that hospitals across the country are going to be overwhelmed like Italy and Spain currently are. I’d love to be proven wrong about this, but the statistics are not trending in that direction.

I’m also repulsed by theology that teaches that God sent this disease to us and it’s part of his perfect design, but I suspect I’m in the minority on this forum.

I don’t believe that God’s omniscience requires that he is the cause and designer of something like this. I don’t engage well with snark, so I’m just going to leave it at that.

is Luke 13:1-5. Let me paraphrase. Jesus noted that Pilate had killed a bunch of Galilean worshippers at the temple, and the Tower of Siloam fell on people and killed several. Were these people worse than anyone else? Did they deserve death more than you because they were bad sinners? No. I tell you you all need to repent lest the same thing happen to you!

Amos 3:6

Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?

What is missing is proportion. The all-or-nothing approach to this problem only creates more problems and worse problems. I work in a hotbed of the Corona virus—Oakland County, Mich. We have a church of 500 plus, a school of 260, a music academy, and we are the sole sponsor of Bethany Villa—a 240 bedroom community for Seniors. I understand the threat. My wife and I are both 63 and I have several health issues already. So I am a good candidate for death, should I get this virus. My mother is 83 with congestive heart failure, diabetes, chronic lung issues, and more. My wife’s parents are both 93. Again, I get the threat more than most. However, I also understand the threat of closing down an entire country and the tens of thousands of deaths nationwide and hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide that economic collapse and ensuing poverty will cause. What effect will that have on my four married children and soon-to-be 13 grandchildren? Already I have had two people directly and indirectly die this week, not because of the Corona virus, but because of the reaction to the virus. One man had his “elective” surgery put off, and as a result he died yesterday. Another man in my church lost is livelihood on account of the virus and unexpectedly died of a heart attack last Sunday. He was 59 and in good health, but broken over the loss of his job. Many leaders have lost all sense of proportion. There is no risk-free utopia. We need measured responses, not hysterical responses, some of which have a godless political agenda. Dr. Bill Bennett says the missing element is proportion. Pandemics have happened before and they will happen again. Some people will die no matter what we do. We must do all we can to reduce death from the virus and simultaneously do all we can to reduce death from economic collapse, depression, and impoverishment. Any approach that ignores this dual responsibility is off-balance. Some hot-spots must be shut down, but not the whole country. In my state the Governor (Dem) has shut down just about everything. Amazingly, liquor stores, pot stores, Planned Parenthood, and Abortion Clinics are fully functioning and open for business. They are “life-sustaining” businesses. By the way, 800,000 babies will be murdered this year in America. Where’s the outrage and panic over that?

Very sorry to hear of those losses in your congregation. Prayers for their families.

From a different blog post re Coronavirus: “I want to maintain that it is usually those who are losing their heads who are the ones who don’t understand the situation, and that they are frequently the ones most vehement in their views, and of the need for us all to act now. As I said, that is usually how it goes, and all the indicators are that this situation is no exception, except that this one is on stilts.”

[Ken S]

I don’t believe that God’s omniscience requires that he is the cause and designer of something like this.

Ken, contrast what you believe/don’t believe with what God has said in innumerable places in scripture, including this: ““If you will diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, your healer.”

How can God promise to protect Israel from diseases if He is not the “cause and designer” of those diseases? If He has no causal role and no control over diseases, He has no ability to protect His people from them if they obey Him. Why would He say explicitly that He “put [diseases] on the Egyptians” if He hadn’t or wasn’t even able to? He is made a liar and we are made hopeless under your theology.

For your comfort, as well as for your orthodoxy, I urge you as a brother to accept God’s sovereignty over every molecule in creation. As just one resource, I recommend watching or listening to R.C. Sproul’s sermon, “If God Is Good, Why Do I Suffer?” — available here: https://www.ligonier.org/learn/series/classic_collection/if-god-is-good…?

[RajeshG]

Amos 3:6

Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?

The point is that calamity comes from God for the purpose of leading us to repentance.

Wlson is in Idaho where it seems there are fewer cases and I suspect fewer people in close contact than in major urban centers. I’m no more an expert than Wilson or anyone else on this thread. I’m not panicking and am not overly concerned about myself (although like Mike Harding I’m among the elderly :-). Yet some of the statements made by Wilson and others reflect their context. He says that “the over-reaction to the virus is even more extraordinary.” Try telling that to people in my area where as testing increases the numbers increase exponentially. No one knows if the present rate will hold steady. If it does, at least in my area, there’s no knowing how many will die. We won’t really know if there’s been an overreaction until this thing is done, if then. We will know if we under-reacted and that’s a real danger as well. Over, under, yes there is proportion. But I don’t know what that balance is. I’m not sure anyone does, least those who think they do. Like many in the Philly area, I’m sheltering in place most of the time but I work as a therapist and still go to the office for telehealth. I shop for food but didn’t need to stock up on TP. There isn’t any anyway. I’d rather work at home or be laid off. Considered essential for some reason. Circumstances are out of our control. But people should not pretend they know there is overreaction (although it might be in unaffected areas), at least not yet. Another nugget of faux wisdom was repeated earlier “that it is usually those who are losing their heads who are the ones who don’t understand the situation.” I wonder if this person understands the situation. Others compare Covid-19 to the swine flu or other viruses to show how relatively few have died without considering that it ain’t over until the fat lady sings. So Wilson might be right, for where he is, but his viewpoint is provincial and reflects a tiny slice of reality. We livestreamed this past Sunday and may for several weeks. The message was from Psalm 46: I will not fear, I will not faint, I will not fret. You all seem to have plenty of time. Check it out on our church website. And wash your hands,

Food for thought from David Horowitz:

https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-coronavirus-begin-us-m…

“Knowing when the virus began and what we think occurred in January and February (and perhaps even December) will help determine not only how severe this virus is, but how far along we are into the epidemic. If we really had hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of cases, along with several thousand more fatalities prior to testing, that would mean that the mortality rate is even lower than the 1.2% post-testing average so far. It would also mean we are farther along in the epidemic and that many have already been exposed to it, thereby making a categorical and nationwide lockdown counterintuitive at this point.”

Further, the Imperial College of U.K. projection on which the UK’s and the US’s lock-downs are predicated has now been significantly downgraded. Instead of 500,000 dead in the UK and hospitals overrun with cases, the projection is now only (I know, but still) 20,000 dead (i.e., only 4% of the original projection) and adequate hospital capacity:

https://www.dailywire.com/news/epidemiologist-behind-highly-cited-coron…

“After just one day of ordered lockdowns in the U.K., Ferguson is presenting drastically downgraded estimates, crediting lockdown measures, but also revealing that far more people likely have the virus than his team figured.”

Layman’s query: how can anyone “credit[] lockdown measures” for any of this revised projection only one day after those measures took effect? Sounds like CYA language, meaning that 100% of the reason for the huge revision is the terrible inaccuracy of their initial assumptions.