I’m going to do something which I rarely do. I’m going to address COVID-19 and the reactions to it.
COVID-19, or SARS-CoV-2, has been with us since about the beginning of 2020 (and possibly earlier). It was a big, scary unknown that was mishandled by national governments to begin with, and reactions ranged from “do nothing” to total lockdowns of entire populations resulting in an economic chaos from which we are still trying to recover as the world has moved on to other catastrophes, natural and man-made, which continue to strain and punish us in new and unexpected ways.
We know a lot more about COVID-19 now. We know that it has a consistent fatality rate of about 2-3% on average worldwide. We know that some blood types tend to be more resistant to it. We know that some folks have chronic symptoms afterwards that can last for months if not years. We also know that it continues to mutate into new and more interesting variants which can cause more or less severe symptoms depending on the variant. Where the mRNA vaccines which are developed are concerned, we know that, in general, folks tend to get infected at about half the rate as the unvaccinated, and tend to have less severe symptoms. But that being said, we also know that the vaccines aren’t a guarantee against infection, regardless of how many times you get it, and that the efficacy of the vaccine wanes over a relatively short amount of time as compared to other, more traditional vaccines. There also appears to be a correlation between the rise of myocarditis and pericarditis in folks, particularly male adolescents and young adults 16 and older which occurs several days after vaccination, and more so after the second vaccination or booster shot. There does seem to be some debate about whether or not the rise of Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome, which coincided with the distribution of the mRNA vaccines, is linked to them directly. There also seems to be some debate across the world as to whether or not SARS-CoV-2 has become endemic, or whether it’s still a pandemic, though that particular debate appears to be more academic now than practical. The same as true as to whether SARS-CoV-2 evolved in nature and was transmitted to humans from animals, or whether it was developed as a Chinese lab experiment which accidentally escaped the lab.
COVID-19 is, for all intents and purposes, a “Supercold”. It’s a coronavirus, a cold virus, which has more severe symptoms and has a much higher fatality rate than the normal, seasonal cold (generally <1%). It falls in line with the emergence of other “Superbugs” like MERSA, VERSA, and a few others which are now emerging which are drug resistant, severe, and have higher fatality rates than their previous incarnations. From my limited understanding, most of these have evolved in response to human attempts to eradicate bacteria and viruses using antibiotics, antivirals, and other pharmaceuticals. In other words, they are nearly all unintentionally man-made. We brought them on ourselves one way or the other, and we did so even as several scientists were warning about this very thing happening through the overuse of pharmaceuticals. Human beings didn’t listen, did what they wanted, and now we all get to lie in the bed we made for ourselves. It’s a familiar and repeating story.
Here’s what I really want to get to. Yes, all of these things are potential threats with various degrees of risk to them, but just living your life has various degrees of risk to it. No matter whether you bungie jump just to wake up in the morning, or you wear three inches of padding, masked, while you stay in your house and never leave it, you will eventually die. As Anthony Hopkins said once, “None of us are getting out of here alive.” This is what it means to be mortal. And this is true whether we die from a car accident, suicide, being murdered, being eaten by wild animals, disease, starvation, or just from living so long the body just decides it can’t do it any longer. In the end, death comes for us all like a patient friend waiting to escort us on.
“All we have to do is to decide what to do with the time we have left.” These are Gandalf’s words from “Lord of the Rings”, and Tolkien’s through his character. We can choose to surrender to our own brain’s survival/threat system and be paralyzed through either fear or anger, or we can choose to live each day by faith, surrendered to the Spirit of Christ within us and disengaged from our own overactive survival responses and behaviors. We can live at a standstill angry at the past and terrified of the future, or we can live right now, in this present moment, letting go of the past which is gone and the future which hasn’t happened yet.
No matter what, vaccinated or unvaccinated, COVID-19 or no COVID-19, we’re always at risk of dying each day, each hour, each moment we live. So is everyone else around us. But if we succumb to the fear of death and allow it to immobilize and paralyze us, then we will never live either, and everything we do, every response we give and every behavior we display will be influenced and informed by this fear born of our malfunctioning flesh. As Paul wrote, “whatever is not from faith is the malfunction.”
Jesus Christ regularly touched lepers. So did His Apostles and disciples. This is an infectious, terribly scarring disease that is eventually fatal, and in the first century had no cure. They did this to heal them. Was it the sensible thing? Not according to our own survival instincts. Had they allowed the fear to dictate their actions, they would have kept the same distance from the infected as everyone else. But the love of God, the God who is love dictated otherwise. Jesus Christ, on instruction from His Father, healed them and didn’t shrink back from them. And by faith, His disciples on His instruction didn’t shrink back from them either.
Life isn’t safe. Life as a disciple of Jesus Christ is less so. If we are going to live that life which He lived and taught, then we must accept the cost and let everything go which obstructs it, especially our fear of death. If we live afraid of death, then we aren’t actually living. We’re just trying not to die, which is always a losing battle.
References:
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/10/11/e043560
https://www.phi.org/press/breakthrough-infection-study-compares-decline-in-vaccine-effectiveness-and-consequences-for-mortality/?gclid=CjwKCAiAuaKfBhBtEiwAht6H79YTlxNVxHS6aMVAxNJDqVu6stYPH1SF9jPtxKukAlpsDR_TTv4KthoC0M8QAvD_BwE
https://www.myocarditisfoundation.org/myocarditis-and-pericarditis-following-mrna-covid-19-vaccination/?gclid=CjwKCAiAuaKfBhBtEiwAht6H7-uoNXOAsSgweHq_-Ub8St0h7Hdld0pUXI3jlKypnuKR6R2yacd61hoC-KIQAvD_BwE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endemic_COVID-19
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