Scott Tibbs
We still need a sense of proportion about COVID-19
By Scott Tibbs, December 14, 2022
If there is one thing we need as we continue to react to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is a sense of proportion. However, as a culture we have completely failed to do that, and we have failed to have any charity or tolerance for those who hold a different opinion than we do on public policy.
The saddest reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic is how Christendom has divided against itself. I recently listened to a sermon where the pastor said that the Christianity of those who comply with COVID-19 mandates is "rank filth." There is absolutely no grace or humility in that statement. If you do not resist "tyranny," you are a fake church. Of course, some Christians have adopted the same "grandma killer" rhetoric as people on the secular Left. All of this is unnecessarily divisive and there is no sense of proportion. It is bad enough when the secular culture does this, but for Christians to behave this way is inexcusable.
One of the places we need to chill out is mask mandates. A lot of people are putting mask mandates and lockdowns on the same level when they talk about COVID-19 restrictions. No. That is wrong. Masks are an annoyance, but lockdowns have literally killed people via deaths of despair: Alcoholism, suicide and overdoses. While I still maintain that temporary lockdowns early in the pandemic (when we had very little solid information) were wise, extended lockdowns led to destroyed lives and many healthy young people dying who should not have died.
Both sides need to admit error here. Those who said COVID-19 was "just a cold" should admit they were wrong in the wake of over one million deaths. Those who claimed that COVID-19 was deadly for everyone (even children) should admit that they were wrong as well, because it has been proven that risk of severe disease is heavily weighted to those who are elderly or have comorbidities. The second group's lies fed and encouraged the first group's denialism, because the panic-mongers so totally shredded their own credibility.
Because everyone has so dug in on their positions for three years, because there has been so much hate and invective thrown by both sides at each other, and because some on the Right are actually calling for "tribunals" for overly restrictive pandemic mitigation policy, there is no hope for reconciliation on this issue. The next severe pandemic will be much worse and much more likely to explode into open violence. And most shamefully, Christians have played into this division and schism - on both sides of the policy debates.
COVID-19 should never have been a culture war flashpoint. It should have been an opportunity for Americans to come together against a common enemy - the virus itself and the genocidal Communist regime that engineered it and released it on the world. Instead of doing that, we immediately started damning each other. Extremists on the Left claimed that anyone who question the wisdom of the strictest policies were mass murderers, and extremists on the Right claimed that every restriction was "tyranny" and those who complied are either traitors or false Christians.
What would Jesus say if He were physically standing among us watching us fight and squabble?
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