When should churches regather? “It seems to me the strong opinions fall into two broad groups”

We re-opened this past Sunday. Here’s the Cliff-Notes version of why:

• The President’s announcement gave immeasurable moral support to religious leaders, as it was intended to do. We wouldn’t have re-opened if he hadn’t done it.
• The CDC released interim guidelines for churches. We wouldn’t have re-opened without them.
• The designation of “essential” is a sad reflection of the value our culture places on certain activities.
• As the re-opening progresses slowly, the justification for the initial “essential/non-essential” designations become increasingly meaningless and arbitrary. I was prepared to go along with it initially because COVID-19 seemed to present a very real danger to all communities. However, as the NYSE is prepared to return to in-person trading, cannabis shops have always been opened, coffee shops have always been opened, and employees of all these establishments (and others) are deemed “safe” to work all day in close proximity to other people, and my own 16-yr old son is deemed “allowed” to go to McDonalds to work for 8 hours in a confined space among other people grilling burgers … am I really supposed to agree that it’s “unsafe” to go to church for 1.5 hours on Sunday morning to worship the Lord? This was a critical consideration for me.
• At this stage, about 70 days in, I see our Governor’s continued ban on church gatherings until Phase 3 as a unwitting secular valuation of religious faith, not as a reflection of the relative safety of corporate worship. This was a critical consideration for me.

So, we re-opened. We are only doing morning worship service on-site; all other classes are via Zoom. Our Governor has said nothing meaningful on the record since the President’s announcement. I am confident resting on Romans 13 with President Trump’s announcement, given the issues I outlined above.

[TylerR]

• At this stage, about 70 days in, I see our Governor’s continued ban on church gatherings until Phase 3 as a unwitting secular valuation of religious faith, not as a reflection of the relative safety of corporate worship. This was a critical consideration for me.

I would say that corporate worship is not relatively safe. I am not arguing on whether churches should reopen or not, just on this statement. The spread of the disease is highly correlated with the assembly of people. Second, a number of outbreaks have been linked directly to church gatherings. I would say that going to the gas station is relatively safe. I would not say that 200 people sitting inches from each other in a confined space is relatively safe as it relates to COVID-19. In addition, those who have been members of churches for decades are all too familiar with the sicknesses that are spread around churches. We have all heard the statement that family X is hit with the stomach flu that is going around the church. Now, I would say that churches can most certainly institute practices that reduce the risk considerably, but I would say that the number one way that this disease is spreading is through the assembly of people in a confined space, which is the very definition of corporate worship.

Regarding having things inside vs. outside, consider wind vs. standard HVAC. Outside—or in a laminar flow environment like a clean room—air enters one side and exits the other, letting “nasty stuff” go elsewhere. Inside, most HVAC relies on diffusion and turbulence to distribute heat (or cold) and humidity, and that’s going to tend to keep nasty stuff—say droplets with COVID-19 in them—where others can breathe it. That’s why a lot of places are allowing outdoor dining, but not indoor, for example, and that’s why churches are hit especially hard by this. That’s why a choir practice got a few dozen people sick and a couple killed, really.

It doesn’t mean that churches ought only open when there are no cases of COVID-19, but I think we will do well to consider how our church buildings are constructed and perhaps even do a back of the envelope calculation of what might likely occur if someone came in with the virus. What’s the likelihood that someone will come with the virus, and what’s the likelihood that this person will spread it? And are we willing to take that risk yet?

One final note is that in OT days, of course, congregants were generally outside at major festivals because the Temple was simply not big enough to handle all of them. Maybe we should—at least when the weather isn’t too brutal—follow the lead of the ancients when we can?

Or, we could send away for our own personalized Tupperware containers. We could seal ourselves in forever, and thus love our neighbors by never having any meaningful contact with anyone else ever again. If we truly cared about our neighbors, we’d be willing to take this step. If it saves one life, it’s worth it (etc., etc.) …

a number of outbreaks have been linked directly to church gatherings.

This is only meaningful in comparison to other things. How many church gatherings did not result in outbreaks? How many outbreaks came from other things? In reality, this number is probably not that great in comparison. But it sounds good if we don’t actually compare it to anything. But it is meaningless.

Regarding Larry’s note, it reminds me in a way of people that tell me that their grandpa smoked like a chimney, but lived to age 95. Sure, not everybody who opens up a church is going to have huge problems, just like not everybody who smokes gets lung cancer, and not everybody who drives drunk smashes himself against a tree. That doesn’t mean that any of these is a smart idea, but only that these things are statistical in nature, and the likelihood of an adverse result is a statistical function (binomial expansion—most of us learned a simple version of this in high school math, actually) of the likelihood of a person with the risk factor and the number of people who might have that risk factor.

In the case of churches, if we assume a likelihood that any given family will have a member with COVID of 0.1%, and an average church attendance of 30 families, you’ve got approximately a 3% risk of having at least one person with the virus there. Multiply that by about 6000 churches in Minnesota, and that’s about 180 opportunities for serious spread of a disease—get a few dozen infected each time, and you’re talking about doubling the # of infected Minnesotans on one Sunday morning.

One can quibble “Oh, but it doesn’t mean that it will be transmitted”, well, sure, but that church in Washington that had a few dozen people infected in one choir practice was taking precautions, too.

Please; watch the numbers, do a bit of the math, compare your “worst case” (100% transmission of disease) with the risk you’re willing to tolerate. Don’t just say “well, it didn’t happen these times….”, because again, it’s the same logic used by people who smoke because their grandpa got away with it.

Multiply that by about 6000 churches in Minnesota, and that’s about 180 opportunities for serious spread of a disease

And yet that is not happening.

It reminds me a bit of people who use stats like “You have a 50% greater chance of contracting X if you do Y.” Well, that sounds really serious. But what was the chance to begin with? If the chance was 50% then 75% is a significant increase. If the chance was .05%, then .075% is much different kind of number.

Here is an interesting article: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/21/how_fear_groupthi…

… the virus is now known to have an infection fatality rate for most people under 65 that is no more dangerous than driving 13 to 101 miles per day. Even by conservative estimates, the odds of COVID-19 death are roughly in line with existing baseline odds of dying in any given year.

There are some many conflicting stats and predictions. Again, the models continue to be grossly misleading. Fear and confusion abounds. But we should probably resort to some common sense. Unfortunately, as the old saying goes, it’s not that common.

Larry thanks for the link. It gives some great facts all in one place. I had found some of the same info from multiple other sources. I like looking up stats from actually government sites to avoid some of the bias if possible and I concluded early on that whole thing was overblown. Once the antibody tests came out I started to do the math by looking at the estimated infection rates for the communities where the antibody tests had been done and the death rate. I quickly found out that the death rate was consistently below 1 percent.

Then… I heard that the Mayo clinic was still very concerned and was resistant to lifting the lockdown. Mayo is a respected organization so I asked why they had such different conclusions when all the evidence I was seeing was pointing in a different direction. I started to notice something else- I noticed that people with a certain political bent were ignoring the data (science and math both being rejected). I looked up Mayo Clinic and political contributions and found this site. Although Mayo does not contribute directly, its employees do. This was quite enlightening and sadly explains alot. As the old saying goes, “follow the money.”

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary?id=D000035692

[Larry]

Multiply that by about 6000 churches in Minnesota, and that’s about 180 opportunities for serious spread of a disease

And yet that is not happening.

It reminds me a bit of people who use stats like “You have a 50% greater chance of contracting X if you do Y.” Well, that sounds really serious. But what was the chance to begin with? If the chance was 50% then 75% is a significant increase. If the chance was .05%, then .075% is much different kind of number.

Here is an interesting article: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/21/how_fear_groupthin…

… the virus is now known to have an infection fatality rate for most people under 65 that is no more dangerous than driving 13 to 101 miles per day. Even by conservative estimates, the odds of COVID-19 death are roughly in line with existing baseline odds of dying in any given year.

There are some many conflicting stats and predictions. Again, the models continue to be grossly misleading. Fear and confusion abounds. But we should probably resort to some common sense. Unfortunately, as the old saying goes, it’s not that common.

Larry you need to be careful with stats in general. As a statistician I can make the same set of numbers say two totally different things. Stats are open to a significant amount of bias. So is science. The statement was, “churches are relatively safe”. It is fairly established science that infections spread when people congregate. This is how every known and working model is structured over the last 150 or so years. So fairly well established. So by that very nature, you cannot say a large congregation of individuals during a pandemic is a relatively safe scenario. Spin all the different infection rates that you want, the statement is not patently true. Each church must make its own decision based on the conditions around it. But part of loving your neighbor is also being a bit careful. Yes you can say that odds are 1 in whatever large number you want to provide, but when that “1” is your church than the stats are irrelevant. That is the general problem with stats. It sounds cool when odds are small, until you are in that group of small individuals, than it becomes problematic. My comments above were not judging or proposing churches to open, it was just around the false statement that I have seen before, that “churches are relatively safe”. The other caution is that 90% of the people that have the disease and can spread it have absolutely no symptoms. Most church policies are around coughs and other things. Even then sickness spreads like wildfire in churches. Without symptoms it further challenge the perception.

Larry you need to be careful with stats in general. As a statistician I can make the same set of numbers say two totally different things. Stats are open to a significant amount of bias.

This was my point. Statistics have meaning only in relation to other things. Statistics can say any number of things, all entirely true and even misleading at the same time. And of course they can be false.

I didn’t use the phrase “relatively safe” because it doesn’t have a lot of meaning. Relative to what?

Of course it is always different when it hits home or close to home. But again, we could say that about any number of things in life. It is impossible to be completely safe. The question is always what level of risk we are willing to take. I am not sure what the answer to that is in this, but we as a society have certainly made that decision in other areas.