Christ is Born! Glorify Him! We have now moved past the Nativity of Christ on both the new and old calendars. As every year, the hierarchs of our Church have issued messages on the feast. Given the situation this year, every message we read had a section on COVID. The following from Patriarch Kirill’s message is very typical.
Today, when the peoples of the earth are enduring the arduous trial of a new disease, when peoples’ hearts are overwhelmed by fear and anxiety for the future, it is especially important that we strengthen our collective and individual prayer and offer to the Lord the diligent labours of good works. Many of our brothers and sisters, as a result of the devastating pestilence, no longer enjoy the opportunity of visiting churches. Let us lift up our petitions to the Merciful Lord that He may renew their bodily and spiritual strength, grant the soonest recovery to those who are sick and send down His help to the physicians and all medical workers who with self-sacrifice are doing all they can for peoples’ health and lives.
Emphasis added. It is a normal thing for a hierarch of the Church to remember the sick, the suffering, the souls of those who died from an epidemic, and health care workers. We have contributors who are health care workers and COVID survivors, so we are very appreciative of the prayers. But COVID has not only caused those infected to suffer, the various governmental responses have also harmed and killed many innocent people. More will suffer as the lockdowns continue, and in some cases intensify. These poor souls, at least as far as the Church appears to be concerned, don’t seem to exist.
The media and governments seem to focus solely on preventing transmission of a disease with a 99.5% or higher survival rate for those under 70. We would have expected the successors to the Apostles to take a much more balanced view, as the lockdowns and other mitigation efforts clearly have costs in terms of human lives and well-being.
As all lives matter to God, so should all lives matter to Orthodox Christians. An elderly person dying of COVID is not less or more valuable than an elderly person dying of “failure to thrive” because he has given up hope while isolated from family and friends. A child starving is of no less value than an obese man in his late 60’s. The Church cannot focus only on some lives, and ignore the danger to others.
As the Church is of Christ, the Church must be willing to use her prophetic voice to speak for all those who are suffering. Our current, single-minded focus on “stopping the spread” has caused some of the following suffering which must be addressed:
- Due to lack of health care / screening, spiking unemployment, and loss of educational opportunities – over 1/3 of excess deaths in the US are already not related to COVID. The impact of anti-COVID measures will be felt for decades in the future. The total excess deaths from lockdowns is projected to be 30 times the excess deaths from COVID. That could end up being a conservative estimate, depending on the disasters in the following bullet points.
Economic disruptions kill and endanger people by severing food supply chains and making it impossible for them to feed their families. The number of people “marching towards starvation” has increased globally to 270 million. David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP) said, “Famine is literally on the horizon and we are talking about the next few months.” He further warned that 2021 risks becoming the worst humanitarian crisis year since the founding of the United Nations. This is not just a problem in the developing world. 50 million people in America are experiencing food insecurity, including 17 million children.- In America, nearly 80 percent of COVID-19 victims have been over 65, and more than 40 percent were living in nursing homes, where the median life expectancy after admission is just five months. To protect these elderly, the COVID lockdowns are killing the young. An American 25-44 years old is 3.6 times more likely to die from restrictions used to “combat” COVID than from COVID itself.
- Research of the Well-Being Trust shows that 75,000 Americans are expected to die deaths of despair in 2021 —including alcohol and drug misuse and suicide. Overdoses and overdose deaths are at their highest point ever in the United States. 1 in 4 young Americans have seriously considered suicide. Globally, suicides are skyrocketing.
- 150 million people worldwide, including 8 million Americans, have been pushed into extreme poverty. Poor people die of all kinds of things that richer people do not.
- Half of lower-income Americans report household job or wage loss due to lockdowns.
- Families can’t pay their rent, so as many as 34 million Americans are at risk of eviction.
- For all of 2020 gold gained 25.1% and silver 47.9%. Why does that matter? Because it signals inflation is accelerating due to all the money printing that is going on in order to prop up stock markets, banks, and big corporations. But precious little of that money is going to the average worker, who will increasingly feel the effects of rapid expansion of the monetary base.
And of course, as Patriarch Kirill pointed out in his message, millions are being deprived of the comfort of Church services in places such as California and Cyprus. Even God is being taken away from those who already have little else.
Lockdowns, to put it bluntly, don’t work. (See this extensive list of studies that verify that fact.) And even if they did, they are not cost free. When discussing lockdowns, this is not a debate between “money” and “life.” Economic activity means jobs, and jobs are how normal, everyday people feed their families. The billionaires are getting richer, while the common people are struggling, overdosing, and increasingly – starving.
Where is the Church? The Church best understands human nature, and human history. The Church and her leaders should be the first to stand up and say that victimizing all of society to “save” the elderly is unacceptable (even if that worked). Are the hierarchs unaware? Are they complicit in this somehow? As we documented in this article on hypocrisy, many clergy have been seen not abiding by COVID restrictions. So perhaps they fear government backlash if they speak out?
Regardless, let us hope the silence of the Church does not continue. Holy Theotokos, intercede for us!
To God and the Savior you’ve given birth;
I ask you, O Virgin,
From the dangers deliver me;
For now I run to you for refuge,
With both my soul and my reasoning.
Now and forever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.
Diseased is the body and the soul;
Deem me truly worthy
Of divine guidance and your care;
For you alone are God’s Mother,
As the good and the birthgiver of the Good.
Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America, a COVID refugee from the Greek Archdiocese
