Among Orthodox Bishops, and Christian leaders in general, the level of concern over Covid-19 has been high and the danger of the virus is being defended in almost dogmatic fashion. Like other religious bodies, the Orthodox Bishops closed their churches, re-opened them slowly, and have enforced extensive restrictions on traditional Orthodox practices. Some of the restrictions are covered here. On a regular basis, bishops and priests have also come out with what are, essentially, denunciations of Christians who do not accept the hysteria associated with Covid-19.
The Right Reverend Alexis is the Bishop of Bethesda and Auxiliary to the Metropolitan for Stavropegial Institutions wrote one such article for the OCA in which he said:
Unfortunately, some are using these same truths to criticize and even condemn the shepherds of Christ’s holy flock for decisions that are in line with civil directives about social distancing, wearing of masks, and the means for distributing Holy Communion. They may argue quite convincingly that these temporary directives harm Orthodox liturgical worship, depriving it of its ability to be an icon of the Kingdom or for the faithful to feel as though they are one Body. They forget that we are living in dangerous times with far too many Orthodox Metropolitans, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons now taken from us into the mansions of the righteous through the corona virus. Unfortunately, these critics go further, construing concerns for safety as faithlessness, love for the flock as disdain for the fathers, and economy as apostasy. In so doing, they are rending the garment of Christ, becoming “false witnesses who speak lies and sow discord among the brethren.”
Follow the official experts. You must believe that you are in mortal danger from Corona Virus or you are denying science. Obey us and the government, or you are a dangerous fundamentalist.
The above statements are, of course, a caricature of what corona skeptics believe. But before we explore that reality, we need to point out the current environment the Church is operating in.
Bankruptcies are now mounting. In recent weeks, just some of the companies that have declared bankruptcy are J. Crew, Gold’s Gym, Neiman Marcus, Hertz, GNC, and Chuck E. Cheese. Thousands of retail locations for these companies and more will be closed. Their staffs will be laid off. The poor former employees may not work again any time soon, as 47.2% of adult Americans are out of work, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
41% of the businesses on Yelp have closed permanently since March 1st according Yelp’s latest Local Economic Impact Report.
The federal budget is likely to top $10 trillion this year (well over double last year’s budget) as a result of literally trillions of new dollars being created out of thin air to finance the stimulus checks and bailouts. This liquidity is making the 1% richer, but doing precious little to help the middle and lower classes survive. Even conservative states such as Florida are blocking evictions to keep a wave of homelessness from sweeping families into the gutter.
Rebellions of the average person are starting to happen, even in Blue States like California. Beaches in Santa Cruz County will reopen starting at midnight Thursday 7/2, even as the county’s corona virus continue to rise. The opening was forced by widespread civil disobedience. Santa Cruz County health officer Dr. Gail Newel said, “People are not willing to be governed anymore in that regard.” People are tired of the Corona restrictions that have ruined their lives and their economic fortunes.
In the middle of growing poverty and social unrest, the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church seems to find itself squarely on the side of Corona restrictions increasingly rejected by the Faithful (and even many priests if judged by social media posts). This might not be such a problem if the data were on the side of the Church’s position. Unfortunately for the bishops, that is not the case.
Following the Science on Covid Mortality
The leaders of the Church claim they are now, and have always been, following the best scientific advice. We all know and accept the fact that Covid-19 can make some people seriously ill and even kill them. But is Covid-19 so deadly that our current response is justified?
While the bishops and other Christian leaders may automatically say yes, there is much data to suggest that quite the opposite is the case.
According to new research by a pair of medical scientists at Stanford University and UCLA, the risk of Covid is way less than experts previously feared:
Across the country, current probabilities of infection transmission, hospitalization, and death from COVID19 vary substantially, yet severe outcomes are still rare events,” the study said. “Individuals may be overestimating their risks of hospitalization and death and a moderate number and frequency of community contacts is unlikely to overwhelm hospital capacity in most U.S. settings.
The risk study by Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, clinical assistant professor of primary care and population health at Stanford, and Dr. Jeffrey Klauser, adjunct professor of epidemiology at UCLA, looked at publicly available case incidence data for the week ending May 30 in the 100 largest U.S. counties as states began to reopen.
The study found a person in a typical medium to large U.S. county who has a single random contact with another person has, on average, a 1 in 3,836 chance of being infected without social distancing, hand-washing or mask-wearing.
If that sounds like a tolerable risk, consider the odds of being hospitalized. The study found a 50-to-64-year-old person who has a single random contact has, on average, a 1 in 852,000 chance of being hospitalized or a 1 in 19.1 million chance of dying based on rates as of the last week of May.
Would you change up your entire lifestyle to reduce a 1 in 19.1 million chance of dying? Actually, would you change anything in your life to further reduce a 1 in 19.1 million chance of dying?
Yeah, didn’t think so.
So why are Christian leaders changing our liturgy and closing our churches? There is always risk in everything we do as people. Even driving to liturgy involves possibly meeting Jesus in way we didn’t intend, as dying in a car accident is the 5th leading cause of death over a lifetime. It is not possible to make everything perfectly safe.
Further, research indicates that while the CDC reports 2.6 million known Corona Virus cases, the number is actually closer to 26 million cases based on antibody tests. That means we are taking extreme precautions to slow the spread of a disease that 1 in 10 Americans has already had and recovered from. In fact, most of them did not even know they were infected.
Based on these new findings, the real death rate from Covid-19 is around 0.26 percent. And with the virus this widespread, any further attempts to “limit” the spread are obviously destined to fail. But this is good news! After all, how much would you panic over catching a disease with a 99.9974% chance of survival?
This is not to belittle the fact that Covid does represent a threat to certain segments of the population (the old and those with certain pre-existing conditions). The New York Times reported that 54,000 deaths due to COVID-19 occurred in nursing home residents and workers. That is over 43% of all deaths in the United States attributed to this disease. Why is it necessary for Churches and governments to limit the life and liberties of everyone to protect the health of a specific and identifiable group of vulnerable people?
Why not have special services for high-risk individuals, and let everyone else get back to the real “normal” based on these findings? The World Health Organization estimates that 1 billion people are infected by the flu each year worldwide. Between 290,000 to 650,000 of them die of flu-related causes. The mortality numbers for Covid-19 put it within the range of a bad flu season. Have we ever cancelled church, changed communion, or altered our liturgical practices because of the flu, even though people (particularly in high-risk categories) get really sick and die every single year?
Why the Obsession With “Cases”?
At the beginning, we locked down to slow the spread to save lives. Based on a researcher and his deeply flawed computer model, many were panicked into believing that we faced as many as 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. alone. We were told that our hospitals would be overwhelmed unless we “flattened the curve,” and people would be dying in hallways waiting for ventilators. No one ever claimed back then that we could indefinitely stop the spread of a virus.
Back in the March to April time frame, the media was obsessed with the death count and took every opportunity to report the grim toll the disease was supposedly taking. But then things began to change. From the peak in April, death rates had decreased 90 percent by early June and were continuing to fall. Suddenly, deaths were irrelevant to the media, and everything became about the increasing number of “cases.” The panic continues, even though new information keeps coming out all the time that the situation is far from critical. No matter how scientific facts change, the media narrative continues to be that the sky is falling.
Here is a report from CNN illustrating the new fixation on case counts, “As of Saturday morning, at least 13 states were showing an upward trend in average daily cases — an increase of at least 10% — over the previous seven days, according to an analysis of Johns Hopkins University data.”
Concern has largely fixated on three states – Texas, Arizona, and Florida, though occasional mention is made of California.
Much of the panic is centered on Texas, particularly the Houston area. Houston Health officials are contributing to the hysteria by counting every positive Covid test (and they are testing everyone) as a “Covid hospitalization,” even if the patient was there for a completely different reason. Lindsey Rosales, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, confirmed that fact. This practice ensures a misleading picture of the true state of the disease in Texas. But even with the inflated numbers, the Houston area was only reporting 567 Covid cases and 7 deaths per 100,000 people on 6/27.
In Texas the “second wave” reporting has gotten so bad that the leaders of the four major hospitals in Houston took the extraordinary step late of holding a joint press conference to clarify that the scare stories of Houston hospitals being overwhelmed with Covid cases are simply untrue. Houston Methodist CEO Dr. Marc Boom told CNBC that the number of hospitalizations are “being misinterpreted, and, quite frankly, we’re concerned that there is a level of alarm in the community that is unwarranted right now.” Boom further added, “We do have the capacity to care for many more patients, and have lots of fluidity and ability to manage. It is completely normal for us to have ICU capacities that run in the 80s and 90s. That’s how all hospitals operate.”
It is a given that the more testing you do the more cases you will find, but the rate at which positive results is increasing is still low while mortality continues to fall. Goldman Sachs’ state-level tracker shows the volume of corona virus tests has risen 23% in the past two weeks, but positive results have increased just 1.3 percentage points to 6.2%. Cases will especially increase if you are mixing results of antibody tests, indicating prior infections from which the patient recovered, with results indicating a currently active infection. NPR reported, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acknowledged that it is mixing the results of two different kinds of tests in the agency’s tally of testing for the coronavirus, raising concerns among some scientists that it could be creating an inaccurate picture of the state of the pandemic in the United States. The CDC’s practice was first reported by Miami public radio station WLRN on Wednesday and was confirmed by the agency in a subsequent email to NPR.”
Higher case numbers are not equating to a larger burden on hospitals nor to increased mortality. If COVID-19 deaths aren’t rising, why the hysteria over identifying new cases? Especially if there is strong evidence that the number of deaths now attributed to COVID-19 might be grossly exaggerated.
So are Church leaders willing to look at the current data, or are they going to remain prisoner to past decisions?
Many Bishops, Politicians, Media, and “Experts” Have Zero Credibility
The Black Lives Matter protests broke out at a time when many churches and businesses were closed, or only operating under serious restrictions. Experts and politicians had been busy fining, arresting, and denouncing as dangerous anyone failing to abide by their stringent guidelines. The Archbishop of the Greek Archdiocese, and many other religious leaders, took part in the protests, even as their own churches were closed or mostly empty under social distancing guidelines. Mayors marched also, even though the marches in many cases violated their own orders.
Even when protests turned to riots, mayors, health experts, and religious leaders continued to turn a blind eye, while still preventing churches from operating freely. Corona Virus, it seems, is only dangerous at gatherings social justice types don’t like.
Nor was this double-standard on Corona restrictions limited just to BLM. At the end of June, thousands flooded the streets of Chicago for a gay pride march, despite the city having one of the toughest lock down strategies any where in the country. Previously, Police had broken up funerals. The mayor had ordered police raids to stop black churches from having services. But suddenly, streets full of people partying at a pride parade were just fine.
If Corona Virus were the new Black Plague, then the rules would be the same for everyone. But the rules aren’t the same at all. Favored groups of protesters obviously have free reign to demonstrate, riot, and party in the streets to their hearts’ content. And very few health experts, politicians, or Christian leaders have much of any thing to say about it.
Even before the BLM and gay pride demonstrations exposed the biases of many in the leadership and expert classes, millions of Americans were asking questions about the restrictions they were living under. But now, any one celebrating or even tacitly supporting these demonstrations and riots has no credibility to demand churches and businesses remain under the current restrictions.
Even the experts from the CDC and other government agencies are being second-guessed under the new conditions we are experiencing. From Congressional hearings to cable news, dissenting voices are stepping forward to question the prevailing narrative concerning the danger posed by Covid-19.
Senator Rand Paul is not just a politician and former presidential candidate, he is also a medical doctor. In recent Congressional testimony, Rand Paul had this to say to Dr. Fauci concerning children going back to school:
There are examples from all across the United States and around the world that show that young children rarely spread the virus.
We shouldn’t presume that a group of experts somehow knows what’s best for everyone. Only decentralized power and decision-making based on millions of individualized situations can arrive at what risk and behaviors each individual will choose. That’s what America was founded on, not a herd with Washington telling us what to do and like sheep we blindly follow.
Orthodox Bishops, and many other Christian leaders, hide behind CDC and other government agency recommendations to assure the Faithful that they are doing the right thing for the right reasons. But as shown above, the evidence just doesn’t support that, and the experts pushing the Covid-19 danger narrative are being increasingly questioned. A large, and expanding, number of Church members are becoming convinced that, given the evidence, the strict lock downs and other measures are more about politics than health. While bishops and priests have openly denigrated this view as belief in “conspiracy theories,” the truth is that this opinion is shared by a diverse group of commentators and leaders.
As mentioned earlier, Senator Rand Paul has been blistering in his assault on the official narrative. Many Republican officials at all levels, including President Trump, have done the same. Even many who were previously defending Corona Virus as a major health risk have now rethought their positions. Writing for The American Conservative, one author penned the follow Mea Culpa:
Since the pandemic began, I’ve been described as a so-called “COVID warrior,” which makes some sense. After all, I’ve defended the shutdowns of large gatherings. I’ve insisted that it’s wise to temporarily close churches and postpone funerals and other ceremonies. I’ve argued that extreme caution is necessary—that to do anything else would be to blatantly and selfishly ignore the scientific information at our disposal. I’ve held the opinion that, although it has caused irrevocable harm to the economy and caused millions of people to suffer, business owners who close up shop for fear of spreading contagion are in the right.
Now I feel like a fool.
Health advice can’t shift with politics—COVID-19, cancer, and the flu don’t know party lines. The virus is either unmanageable or manageable. That’s it.
Now, with Trump aiming to restart his so-called “MAGA rallies,” we’ll inevitably have—and already have had—another round of tut-tutting from the media about how horribly irresponsible it is to gather in crowds. But who can possibly blame those who shrug these warnings off? MAGA rallies very well could spread COVID-19, but in the event they do, the George Floyd protests will be equally culpable. Expert credibility has been lost.
Political analyst and former Bill Clinton advisor Dick Morris outright wrote in an Op-Ed that this whole thing is a political scam, “The Democrats want, above all else, for Trump to be defeated. Part of their plan is to so paralyze the country with fear of the virus as to delay any economic recovery until after election day.”
Morris is not alone, nor is it alleged that Covid-19 opportunism is limited only to the United States. On June 25th, a text warning of the use of Covid-19 as a pretext for authoritarianism was issued by a group including 13 Nobel prize winners, 34 former national presidents, 7 former vice presidents, 20 former prime ministers, along with the former secretary-general of NATO, the Secretary-General Organization of American States, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and numerous governors, congresspersons, members of parliament, and government ministers. The text declares in part:
Authoritarian regimes, not surprisingly, are using the crisis to silence critics and tighten their political grip. But even some democratically elected governments are fighting the pandemic by amassing emergency powers that restrict human rights and enhance state surveillance without regard to legal constraints, parliamentary oversight, or timeframes for the restoration of constitutional order.
Parliaments are being sidelined, journalists are being arrested and harassed, minorities are being scapegoated, and the most vulnerable sectors of the population face alarming new dangers as the economic lock downs ravage the very fabric of societies everywhere.
Repression will not help to control the pandemic, Silencing free speech, jailing peaceful dissenters, suppressing legislative oversight, and indefinitely canceling elections all do nothing to protect public health.
Christian Bishops and other leaders may wish to stay above-the-fray, but this is an increasingly political storm that pits many average people versus powerful interests. Neutrality is not going to be an option. We have encouraged the Orthodox Bishops to develop and publicize plans for completely re-opening their churches. These plans would be independent of “experts” that are being increasingly challenged, and would allay the fears of the faithful that the bishops have bought into the “new normal.”
So far, it doesn’t look like this has happened. Instead, while the country seethes in crisis, Orthodox jurisdictions continue to ignore much of the calamity around them. They continue with unnecessary plans to change communion and to publish articles attacking members of the Faithful who don’t believe the current hysteria is justified. That needs to change, for they are attacking the very determined and independent thinking Christians the church will most need to survive the deepening crisis.
