Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. (C.S. Lewis)
On a related note, I just read an email from a former colleague announcing that his church’s leadership “prayerfully decided” to cancel worship services until September 6th! By my count, his church will have been closed for six whole months. No doubt the heavens rejoiced!
At a time when churches around the country are reopening or hoping to soon, a second pastor responded, wasting little time praising this courageous move: “Thanks for taking the lead,” he gushed, “It helps the rest of us.” With what, one wonders.
Such “benevolence” must be cross-checked with the facts. Despite the oversized fears of the potential effects of the coronavirus generated by early “scientific modeling” and the grim, self-promoting hysteria dispensed by the headline-seeking media, recent statistics would seem to argue for a more reasoned response.
One important fact, generally underreported, is that a significant portion of deaths due to the coronavirus (either with it or because of it) have occurred in nursing homes. A recent study estimates that number nationwide to be somewhere between 33 percent to over 50 percent. Another study I read locates the number at 42 percent (despite nursing homes comprising only 1.8 percent of the population).
Heather MacDonald, in an article entitled “A Short Guide to Justifying Re-Lockdown” (from which the following statistics are mostly drawn), reports that this includes 80 percent in Minnesota and West Virginia, 73 percent in Rhode Island, 66 percent in Pennsylvania, 59 percent in Massachusetts, 58 percent in Virginia, 57 percent in Colorado, and 55 percent in Connecticut. Abroad, the estimate is 57 percent in Spain, 53 percent in Italy, and 50 percent in Sweden.
These numbers do not include those living outside nursing homes but who are elderly and/or afflicted with preexisting co-morbidities. All told, these account for virtually all the deaths due to the coronavirus.
Neil Ferguson, of Imperial Collage fame, whose initial (and wildly inaccurate) models estimated 2. 2 million deaths in the United States alone, and upon whose projections the massive, unprecedented lockdowns were undertaken, recently conceded that as many as two-thirds of those who die of the virus in 2020 would have died by the end of the year anyway.
Newer statistics also show that the middle-aged and the young are at minimal risk. The median age of coronavirus deaths in most countries is 80. In Pennsylvania, for instance, more people over the age of 100 died of the virus than those under 45; more over 95 than under 60; and more over 85 than under 80.
In Spain, one study found that the fatality rate for people under 60 was 0.052 percent – half that of the seasonal flu. In short, assuming MacDonald’s facts are even ‘ballpark’ accurate, the coronavirus has disproportionately affected the elderly and the infirm. And yet we’re led to believe that everyone is at equal risk.
According to the latest report by the CDC, the estimated death toll for the coronavirus in the United States is 0.26, slightly higher than the seasonal flu. (The original “model” by the W.H.O. for global mortality was 3.4.)
I was in high school when the Hong Kong Flu hit in the late 60s. According to the CDC, the estimated number of deaths then was 1 million worldwide and about 100,00 in the U.S., roughly equal to the U.S. totals for the coronavirus. The curious thing is, I don’t even remember it. And several people I’ve talked to of my age don’t remember it either.
A decade earlier, during the Asian Flu pandemic of 1957, again according to the CDC, the estimated number of deaths was 1.1 million worldwide and roughly 116,000 in the U.S., higher, be it noted, than the current pandemic so far.
In both instances, the country didn’t shut down. As a high school student during the Hong Kong Flu, I continued to go to school every day. My father went to work. Life continued normally. Indeed, as has been reported, the Woodstock Music Festival occurred in the very midst of the pandemic in August of 1969. Talk about the absence of social distancing.
So why the unprecedented hysteria?
Before continuing, I need to make one thing clear. I am anything but cavalier about the vicious nature of the coronavirus or the tragedy of so many deaths caused by it, especially the elderly. Over the years as a pastor, I spent A LOT of time in nursing homes and elderly care facilities. A LOT. My work also required that I spend even more time in hospitals. I’ve seen more than my share of misery in and out of these institutions.
I’ve seen death up close and personal. I’ve performed well over a hundred funerals and memorial services over the years.
I do not take death lightly, nor am I comforted in any way by statistics that might be interpreted as diminishing the pain, sadness, and despair felt by these elderly people and their families. Just the opposite.
If anything, for me, what is perhaps most revealing about the current death count is that it underscores my long held conviction that our death-denying culture needs to reexamine the care and treatment of our elderly, in nursing homes, elderly care facilities, and within families. Most nursing home residents receive absolutely NO visitors, family or otherwise.
Yet I also know that death is a part of life. Once, while visiting a church member in a nursing home (she was 103 at the time), I mentioned that another church member down the hall had just died of pneumonia at the age of 94.
Her response struck me. “Oh,” she replied wistfully, but emphatically, “Good for him!” Was her response callous or cavalier? Hardly. She understood that human beings aren’t meant to live forever and that there comes a time when one welcomes death. Especially, I would add, when the heavenly glories of eternal life beckon beyond the brokenness, pain, and loss of this earthly realm.
So it is not a callous disregard for life that motivates my reflections on this pandemic or my (apparently very unpopular) conviction, held from the start, that our reaction to this pandemic was and is simply over-the-top.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not opposed to reasonable efforts to mitigate the effects of the virus, especially as it relates to the most vulnerable populations. I’m in favor of them. But the operative word here is “reasonable.” And in my opinion, our collective reaction has been anything but reasonable.
Sam Jacobs observes that we live increasingly in a “bubble-wrapped” culture, one dedicated to “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” that claim our “right” to never be disturbed or offended by anything.
It was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who once warned the nation not to “bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.” But absolute security is precisely what we seem to think we deserve and must have – apparently at any cost.
Jacobs further points out that the word “trauma” used to mean something. Today it is anything that offends us, no matter how innocuous. The word “trauma” has been expanded to mean “even slight physical or emotional harm or discomfort.”
In our ‘everybody gets a participation medal’ culture, we now refer to teachers, firefighters, and police officers as “heroes,” which, Jacobs points out, is not to downplay their roles within society, but simply to point out that the word “hero” has come to mean something very different than it did “100 or even 30 years ago.”
Today “safe spaces” are “where there is no room for disagreement or questions because language is literally violence.” And when “violence” becomes anything we find the least offensive, it cheapens the reality of real violence.
Our daughter, a college administrator, once told my wife and me about one particular student who insisted on having his mother attend his interview for a student job at the university – and seemed stunned that they didn’t seem to think that was a great idea!
The larger point is that over the years, not just in universities but in boardrooms as well, a profound shift has occurred in our culture, away from the traditional understanding of life as unpredictable, dangerous, and even tragic, and toward the utopian expectation that we deserve total protection.
And just as this idea kicked in, here comes a wholly unmanageable and unpredictable pandemic. So what’s an entitled and coddled America to do?
The answer? Shut down society. Safety Uber Alles! The result?
The argument is sometimes made that we face a choice between “safety” and “our stock portfolios.” But as Stanford Medical School’s Jay Bhattacharya has pointed out, it’s actually a choice between “life and life.”
On the satirical website, The Babylon Bee, there was a mock story weeks ago aptly entitled: “Man Glad To Know Job That Fed His Family, Paid His Rent Is ‘Non-Essential.’”
Behind the ironic punchline are some deadly serious facts. So far it’s estimated that the loss of economic output in the U.S. is roughly 5 percent of GDP, which translates to $1.1 trillion for every month of the shutdown. This does not account for the trillions of debt being racked up, with no known end in sight.
I read the other day that Hertz, once the undisputed king of car rental companies, just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Many major airlines are expected to follow suit, as are innumerable businesses, both small and large. It’s only just started.
These are not just economic statistics. They translate into real people’s lives, especially the lower-income population that is far more likely to lose jobs and face far higher mortality rates.
The devastation caused by the economic lockdown has led to a higher number of suicides, for instance. Health officials in California report that a year’s worth of suicides has already occurred in the months since the lockdown began.
Not to mention the loneliness, depression, and substance abuse. Divorce rates, I’m told, are up. Violence within the home is on the upswing. I’ve even heard that car thefts are on the rise (as an example of societal breakdown).
What about health care? In a recent article written by three prominent academicians, we are told that the loss of life due to economic hardship is and will be significant in ways not immediately obvious.
“Statistically,” they write, “every $10 million lost in U.S. incomes results in one additional death. One portion of this effect is through unemployment, which leads to an average increase in mortality of at least 60 percent. That translates into 7,200 lives lost per month among the 36 million newly unemployed Americans, over 40 percent of whom are not expected to regain their jobs.”
“In addition, many small business owners are near financial collapse, creating lost wealth that results in mortality increases of 50 percent. With an average estimate of one additional lost life per 417 million income loss, that would translate to 65,000 lives lost in the U.S. for each month because of the economic shutdown.”
They also write of “the cost of delayed or foregone health care imposed by the shutdown and the fear it creates among patients.” Their neurosurgery colleagues report “half of their patients have not appeared for treatment of a disease which, left untreated, risks brain hemorrhage, paralysis or death.”
They also report emergency stroke evaluations are down 40 percent. They estimate that only half of the cancer patients in the U.S. are currently receiving chemotherapy. New cases are not being diagnosed while “three-fourths of routine cancer screenings are not happening because of shutdown politics and fear among the population.” In addition, “childhood vaccines are not being performed, setting up the potential of a massive future health disaster.”
I could go on. The point is that we’ve embarked on a massive social experiment the implications of which we can only but dimly perceive. The statistics so far have not been encouraging.
And, again, for what? If, as the current statistics suggest, the threat of the virus is largely confined to a select portion of the population, why are we risking our livelihoods, our future economic viability, and our health, both physical and mental, based on clearly discredited predictive models?
Perhaps it’s because we have come to expect and demand a perfect world where our “safety” is assured, and the skies are not cloudy all day. The god of “safety” to whom we sacrifice is a jealous god, and demands much, perhaps more than we will be able to bear.
It seems to me, therefore, that the mainline churches, rather than cowering in fear or indulging in affectacious moral preening, should emerge as the voice not just of faith but reason.
There is no perfect world (it’s biblical). Yet even in the midst of this broken one, the only one we’ve been granted to know, there exists a kind of peace and consolation the world cannot know, one in which we are assured of God’s mysterious, ineffable love, not just now but in the world to come.