Thanks for this. Interesting piece (all of them have been), but I don't at all agree with your quite strong criticism of conservatives in their reaction to the virus.
"Ignoring the pandemic isn’t like smoking or not wearing your seatbelt. It’s more like driving drunk." The people who are at risk are the very old, the very sick, and the very fat; most others are not seriously at risk. The virus mostly spreads within fairly narrow circumstances: close contact indoors for multiple consecutive minutes.
It's hardly selfish to think that the self-imposed depression (which has hurt the poor the most) was not consonant with the science. The vulnerable minority should have taken extra precautions and stayed home, and the rest of us could have (with precautions) continued our lives and kept the economy going and prevented so much economic carnage.
I'm not addressing that to all lockdown skeptics or everyone who has issues with the public health rollout. Your view, while not exactly mine, is reasonable. It may or may not be correct, but it's reasonable. I'm referring to people who I think were being unreasonable. Particularly, a tendency among a certain subgroup of conservative Christians to view actual instruments of suppressing the virus not as policy questions but as metaphysical questions. There's a kind of bloodless abstraction there, a refusal to deal plainly with what we're plainly dealing with. It doesn't sound to me like you'd fall into that camp.
Good piece, and I echo a lot of your thoughts. I too really appreciated Rod's approach to this pandemic and my wife and I approached it in a similar manner. We're very thankful now that we're vaccinated that life is close to getting back to normal.
"the notion that attending church is an entitlement"
I do take issue with this though - it is. Letting folks practice their religion is fundamental to our country. A week or three of no services (not state imposed) because we're still learning about the virus is fine, but to expect them to not have services for months, with no end in sight, is not ok. They are not "entitled" for simply wanting to worship together. Even more so if one is Orthodox, Catholic, or Anglican and believes they are partaking in the Eucharist - it cannot be transmitted via Zoom.
This is an interesting thing to think about. I've taken the position (I am Catholic) that the real goal here is not to avoid getting sick myself (I'd probably be fine), but to stop the spread. Someone like me is likely to have a mild case but possibly infect others. If I get infected at Mass, infect another young person in a store, and then they go visit their grandmother and she dies of COVID...? Or if a truly vaccine-resistant variant arises? How does my individual responsibly factor into these situations? I'm not sure, really, but I've taken the view that yes, it's okay to miss the Eucharist in order to ensure that I don't possibly harm anyone else.
A lot of skeptics seem to think everyone who seeks to minimize their risk of infection is doing so because they're overly afraid of the virus personally. I have done so primarily to mitigate risk to others, though I may be in the minority for both observing pretty strict guidelines *and* not being particularly afraid of COVID myself.
Ha, I've got thoughts on peak oil too - not the literal doomsday scenario (almost all environmental doomsday scenarios, particularly the population bomb stuff, don't pan out.) But I'm sympathetic to the deeper idea that a lot of what we take for granted in modern civilization relies on the excess energy we get from the ground. I take peak oil as a call to humility. We're not entitled to the riches of modern life, and one day we may be forced to go without them. I guess that's a similar concept to the pandemic as Lent, now that I think about it.
Thanks for this. Interesting piece (all of them have been), but I don't at all agree with your quite strong criticism of conservatives in their reaction to the virus.
"Ignoring the pandemic isn’t like smoking or not wearing your seatbelt. It’s more like driving drunk." The people who are at risk are the very old, the very sick, and the very fat; most others are not seriously at risk. The virus mostly spreads within fairly narrow circumstances: close contact indoors for multiple consecutive minutes.
It's hardly selfish to think that the self-imposed depression (which has hurt the poor the most) was not consonant with the science. The vulnerable minority should have taken extra precautions and stayed home, and the rest of us could have (with precautions) continued our lives and kept the economy going and prevented so much economic carnage.
I'm not addressing that to all lockdown skeptics or everyone who has issues with the public health rollout. Your view, while not exactly mine, is reasonable. It may or may not be correct, but it's reasonable. I'm referring to people who I think were being unreasonable. Particularly, a tendency among a certain subgroup of conservative Christians to view actual instruments of suppressing the virus not as policy questions but as metaphysical questions. There's a kind of bloodless abstraction there, a refusal to deal plainly with what we're plainly dealing with. It doesn't sound to me like you'd fall into that camp.
Good piece, and I echo a lot of your thoughts. I too really appreciated Rod's approach to this pandemic and my wife and I approached it in a similar manner. We're very thankful now that we're vaccinated that life is close to getting back to normal.
"the notion that attending church is an entitlement"
I do take issue with this though - it is. Letting folks practice their religion is fundamental to our country. A week or three of no services (not state imposed) because we're still learning about the virus is fine, but to expect them to not have services for months, with no end in sight, is not ok. They are not "entitled" for simply wanting to worship together. Even more so if one is Orthodox, Catholic, or Anglican and believes they are partaking in the Eucharist - it cannot be transmitted via Zoom.
This is an interesting thing to think about. I've taken the position (I am Catholic) that the real goal here is not to avoid getting sick myself (I'd probably be fine), but to stop the spread. Someone like me is likely to have a mild case but possibly infect others. If I get infected at Mass, infect another young person in a store, and then they go visit their grandmother and she dies of COVID...? Or if a truly vaccine-resistant variant arises? How does my individual responsibly factor into these situations? I'm not sure, really, but I've taken the view that yes, it's okay to miss the Eucharist in order to ensure that I don't possibly harm anyone else.
A lot of skeptics seem to think everyone who seeks to minimize their risk of infection is doing so because they're overly afraid of the virus personally. I have done so primarily to mitigate risk to others, though I may be in the minority for both observing pretty strict guidelines *and* not being particularly afraid of COVID myself.
Rid thought the pandemic was going to lead to societal collapse. He thought the same thing at y2k. He thought the same thing at peak oil.
Ha, I've got thoughts on peak oil too - not the literal doomsday scenario (almost all environmental doomsday scenarios, particularly the population bomb stuff, don't pan out.) But I'm sympathetic to the deeper idea that a lot of what we take for granted in modern civilization relies on the excess energy we get from the ground. I take peak oil as a call to humility. We're not entitled to the riches of modern life, and one day we may be forced to go without them. I guess that's a similar concept to the pandemic as Lent, now that I think about it.