Tag: coronavirus

being a Christian does not make you an expert on medical science

The subject of medical science and research has obviously been in the news over the last year, with the Covid-19 pandemic and the race to find and implement effective and safe vaccines. And since this has been the news, of course it has become a political football. Somehow, credible, peer-reviewed and valuable medical research and science has come to be seen as a political agenda or dangerous idea to a good chunk of the American electorate. With the Delta variant spreading quickly, and large swathes of the population remaining unvaccinated despite the best efforts of literally every credible voice in American politics and popular culture to encourage vaccination (not to mention the reams of science and data on the efficacy and overall safety of these vaccines, produced in breathtaking and record-setting time by some of our finest minds), the question of what science to trust and listen to is once again on the front of everyone’s minds.

The politicization of medical science means that, of course, conservative Christian political voices have seized on it and are amplifying the very worst and most damaging claims of right-wing and anti-science voices in their never-ending pursuit of cultural and political influence. Already a hotbed of bad science, anti-vax activism, and conspiracy theories, conservative churches have seized on the idea of Covid vaccines being somehow the mark of the Antichrist, or a conspiracy to oppress religious voices, or somehow a sign of the end times. A concerted effort is underway in many evangelical and conservative churches to discourage their congregants from getting the vaccine, making the ability of our society to get past this pandemic that much more difficult. Many pastors and Christian leaders are using the trust and power placed in them to undermine and discredit science and the best efforts of medical professionals who swore an oath to heal and take care. I can’t imagine a more anti-Christian message to spread.

Here’s the thing many Christians seem to have forgotten: being a Christian does not make you a special expert on other things outside the realm of faith. There is a profound confusion about the role of the Christian faith and the Scriptural witness vis a vis science and medical practice. Many Christians take their faith to be a license of expertise on empirical, researched scientific fact and practice. They seem to believe that being disciples of Christ somehow bestows the ability to make judgments about which science is “good” and which is not.

But, these Christian leaders are wrong. Nothing about being a Christian – even a prominent Christian leader, with Twitter followers and a big church and TV appearances and best-selling books – makes one an expert on any subject matter. Certainly, Christians are not even experts on being Christians. Following Paul, we are all fools, and truth be told, becoming a Christian means learning that as one of the first lessons. But, even less so are we experts on medical science and research, unless of course you are a Christian who also went to medical school and became a doctor or medical researcher. But I’m gonna guess many of the loudest Christian voices second guessing the science of vaccines and public health are not folks who have medical degrees or who are actively engaged in the work of medical research.

The place Christians can speak authoritatively to medicine is in the realm of ethics. Christianity has much to contribute to the conversation about how we practice medicine, about the choices we make in the application of medical science and learning to the lives people live. But notice: this does not include space to second guess or speak ignorantly about the science behind medicine. For example, Christians can have an opinion on the ethics of knee replacement surgery (to choose an anodyne and non-controversial medical practice: this conversation could and has been had about euthanasia, or abortion, or stem cell treatments.) Are knee replacements ethical? Is it something we as a people should do? Is it something we as Christians should condone or practice? How do we care for those who have the surgery? What about when the surgery fails? Can Scripture speak to our care for those with bad knees? Is there a better way to treat those with bad knees? Now, yes, this is a rather tongue-in-cheek example. Nobody, outside of Jehovah’s Witnesses I suppose, has a problem with knee replacements. But, the questions posed here are the kinds of ethical questions Christians are trained to ask and think about. Where we aren’t qualified to speak is on the science of how knees work, or the medical science behind how to complete a knee replacement surgery, or the medicine required to ensure the patient is comfortable and survives the treatment. Those are specialized questions of medical science, outside the realm of faith and what can be known as a result of being a follower of Christ.

Likewise, in the case of Covid and vaccines, Christians can certainly speak on methods of ensuring public health, on the ethics of enforced vaccination regimes, on the best societal practices to limit transmission. Christians should not, on the other hand, be spreading bogus science about the safety of vaccines, about vaccination as a legitimate practice of large-scale disease control, about conspiracy-laden understandings of what is in the vaccine, or about the scientific efficacy of vaccination on marginalized and high-risk communities. To deny the science is to deny the reason God gave us as human beings, the reason that drove the medical science and research that led to the breakthrough in vaccines as a medical practice, and today in its usefulness in battling Covid.

This is hard for some Christians, because they desperately want the Bible to speak authoritatively and clearly on every subject conceivable, when it just doesn’t. For instance, the Bible doesn’t tell me anything about how to replace the starter on my Kia, and any Christian leader who tries to convince me it does is just full of shit, and probably trying to coerce me into submitting myself to them and ultimately enriching them in some way. Likewise, the Bible simply says nothing about how to conduct medical research, how to set up a pharmaceutical trial, or which protein compounds are active in the healing process. You may want the Bible to speak to these things, for various reasons (usually related to political commitments), but the fact is, it just doesn’t. And that’s ok! God gave us good brains and the ability to figure this stuff out, and specifically, God imbued some people with a talent and aptitude for this kind of work. We should listen to and generally trust those people! And likewise, they should listen to people like Christians when making ethical decisions about the application of all that science and learning. But, when you start trying to make the Bible a science book, you are making a terrible mistake, one that marks you as someone reasonable people should not take seriously in these conversations.

Now, none of this should not be construed as me saying that science is unassailable, or perfect in its practices and conclusions. Far from it. But, criticism of science must derive from within the realm of scienctific enquiry and practice, not faith, because science speaks a different language than faith. Christians have a lot of say about the practice of medicine. We don’t have much to say, Scripturally and ecclesiastically, on the development of medical science and its conclusions on disease. Science is not faith. The Bible is not a medical textbook.

Here is what science tells us: vaccines work. The Covid vaccines work remarkably well. Covid is a deadly and dangerous virus that spreads through the air. Masks work to slow the spread. Distancing works to slow the spread. No one is immune to Covid. Medical science has spent decades developing the tools and empirical practices to come to these conclusions, and the large majority of medical practicioners (including Dr. Anthony Fauci) are smart, good people doing the hard work of trying to keep people safe and alive.

Here is what our Christian faith should tell us: trust the science. Pastors are not medical doctors. Doing your best to limit the spread of a deadly disease, by social distancing and masking up and getting vaccinated, is the Christian work of loving your neighbor as yourself. Conspiracy theories and the politics of fear are competitors with God for our allegiance, not helpful tools to become better Christians, and should be rejected. Christians can and should think hard about how we apply the medical knowledge we gain towards the end of healing and caring for others; but Christians are simply not qualified by dint of being Christians to reject medical science and research. If your preferred Christian leader or voice tries to act otherwise, you should probably rethink your affinity for them.

Wear a mask.

Social distance.

Stay informed.

Trust our doctors and medical professionals.

And please, for the love of all things good, get vaccinated if you can.

Oh, we remember all right

This is possibly the most pathetic thing I’ve ever read:

Sad.

Over here in reality, the Biden administration has done some great work rolling out vaccine distribution in amazingly short period of time, despite having to start almost from scratch amongst the wreckage left behind by the last administration.

The Moral Debt of 284,000 Deaths

As of this morning, according to data compiled by the Washington Post, the Covid-19 death toll in the United States stands at 284,005 deaths. Overall, there have been about 15 million documented cases of Covid-19 in the US. Both of these numbers, as shockingly high as they are, probably undersell the actual impact, considering the sorry state of testing, contact tracing, and medical reporting in large swathes of the country.

On Wednesday of last week, the single day death total was 2,861 deaths. For some context, 2,977 people died in the September 11th terrorist attacks. 2,403 people died during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

In total, 620,000 soldiers died during the US Civil War, the bloodiest conflict American forces have been involved with. We are a third of the way to that total in less than one year. The Civil War lasted almost five.

These numbers should be shocking and grief-inducing. We should look at the news that 284,005 Americans have died over the last year from a pandemic, and feel….something. The fact that many of us don’t – myself included – is a really sad commentary on how numb we have become as a nation to those things that are outside of what we would have considered normal or acceptable in the past. Our civic conversations have degraded to a point where millions of Americans have suffered from a terrible disease, and hundreds of thousands of them have been killed, and we can’t hardly muster up a collective tear. Half of us have become inured to the insanity of the world. The other half refuse to acknowledge reality or believe anything anyone tells them.

None of this is a natural occurrence, or a regular progression of rational events. The abnormality of our present moment and our collective obsessions is astounding, if you take a moment to step back and look at it. And, the worst part is, it did not have to happen. The fact that we are at this point is the result of choices and actions taken by people. We have to acknowledge that, and respond to it, if we are going to begin any kind of healing process.

Most importantly, these 284,005 deaths weren’t natural and inevitable. They did not have to happen. Someone bears the blame, and not just the blame, but the moral debt incurred by hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. And that someone is anyone in a leadership role or position of responsibility who downplayed, dismissed or in any other way disregarded the very real threat of Covid-19, and the advice and direction of public health experts who told them what we needed to do as a society to weather this storm.

This goes against much of the conversation around who bears the blame for the Covid situation in the United States. Even from the most dedicated critic on the left, the narrative is often construed as one where our political leaders should only be held responsible for maybe half of Covid deaths; the rest are considered inevitable ones that would have happened even with a more responsible and effective leader. And, at one level, this is probably correct. No matter who was leading our nation over the course of the last year – Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, Joe Biden or George W. Bush – many people would likely have contracted Covid-19 and died. Such is the nature of highly infectious disease.

Nevertheless, I still contend that the total blame here, and the accompanying moral debt that follows the unforeseen deaths of so many people, should be shouldered by our nation’s leaders. The actions and words of these people matter for how we account for these situations. And, from the beginning, President Trump and his most ardent defenders – in the federal government, in Congress, in media, and in various states – have downplayed the crisis, deflected their responsibility, and denigrated those who have worked, suffered, and died. Their failure to do the right thing – the things that experts and health officials and other politicians and even millions of regular, rational people were calling for them to do – means that they must carry the full weight of guilt for those 284,005 deaths. Not only did they cause thousands of unnecessary deaths and untold suffering through their poor policy choices and irresponsible rhetoric, but they also dishonor the deaths of even those who would died anyways. In short, these people bear the weight of all these deaths through dint of simply not trying to mitigate or respond to them in a rational way.

The Covid pandemic in America is a true travesty, and in a more sane world – in a fairer version of history – those who are responsible would go down with the reputation they deserve: that of some of the most morally reprehensible people who ever lived, people who turned a blind eye to massive and largely preventable human suffering, all for short term political gain, and who as a result are remembered primarily for justifying and facilitating hundreds of thousands of deaths. They would be remembered as the cowards they are, scared to stand up to widespread ignorance and fear and push back by presenting a fact-based discourse in the interest of helping people, even if it meant they got dragged on Twitter or bashed on Fox News in the near term.

There are countless people who make up this group of people, and they are led first and foremost by Donald Trump. In 2016, he ascended to a elected position who has as one of its primary functions the moral leadership of the nation. Throughout American history, the President has led by example and word as much as he has by policy and plan. In times of great struggle and crisis, the President’s moral leadership is crucial to maintaining order and directing public will towards the good. While this intention is not always cared through well, this President in particular has failed in this most important task, as he decided from early on to not respond to the pandemic in a way that would help people, but instead selfishly attempted to shift any and all blame and responsibility away from himself. Since February 2019, this has been the primary purpose of his entire public persona, and from all accounts, his private ones as well. Not once has he taken responsibility and tried to address the crisis and save lives; instead, he has consistently shown that his priority is trying to deflect any blame and to win cheap political fights. In the face of a pandemic, his actions have been particularly morally reprehensible.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. Those of use who were critical of Trump to politician from the start saw this coming, and have watched his failure to lead – morally, politically, ethically – from day one of his administration. No one can hide behind claims of ignorance about Trump, because there were myriad early indicators, and a plethora of voices trying desperately to call attention to it, and to the dangers this man posed to the nation and the world.

It did not have to be this way. His failures could have been circumvented and nullified. Such is the decentralized nature of our Constitutional form of government. But instead, members of his political party decided that defending and parroting the President took precedence over doing the right thing and helping the people who had entrusted them with the responsibility of leading. For instance, here in my home state of Oklahoma, our Governor Kevin Stitt, a Tulsa area businessman who rode the tried and true playbook of “we need a businessman to show all those politicians how to really govern” to office in 2018, has shaped himself as Trump-lite during the pandemic. Instead of following the lead of other governors in this part of the country, imposing a statewide mask mandate alongside responsible distancing recommendations, Governor Stitt has instead continually pushed the rhetoric of “personal responsibility” as the antidote to the virus, even as numbers spiked in the spring and never really came down. Of course, Governor Stitt was counting on Oklahomans to view his call for personal responsibility as a “do as I say, not as I do” thing, as early on in the pandemic, he was still posting pictures to his Instagram of he and his family at Oklahoma City-area restaurants, unmasked and in close quarters with hundreds of others. He subsequently contracted Covid-19 this summer, but was lucky enough to escape relatively unharmed, a fate that 1,900 of his late fellow citizens wish they could have shared.

Recently, Governor Stitt dipped into the bucket of typical neo-Trumpian Covid responses, calling for a statewide Day of Prayer and Fasting, in order to “continue to ask God to heal those who are sick, comfort those who are hurting and provide renewed strength and wisdom to all who are managing the effects of COVID-19.” Never mind that he himself is one of those who could be managing those effects; perhaps all those prayers and all that fasting will make an impression on his own soul, and spur him to action. Us Okies aren’t going to hold our collective breaths, however. His false piety, far from being spiritually comforting, is instead deeply insulting to those of us who as people of faith take the idea of communal prayer seriously, not as an offering in hope of divine intervention, but instead as preparation for human action guided by the Holy Spirit. Additionally, it is a slap in the face to those who have suffered from the disease, as it becomes apparent that Governor Stitt, like the President he so obviously models himself on, just doesn’t give enough of a damn to actually do anything about the effects of Covid-19 on Oklahoma and its people.

People like Governor Stitt have enabled Donald Trump, and continued to clear the ground for the inaction and irresponsibility of our civic forces in the face of a worldwide pandemic. It it these very people who bear the burden of guilt for the deaths and the suffering. I repeat myself: it did not have to be this way. We could have, like much of the rest of the world, reacted quickly and intelligently, limiting the spread and saving lives and doing the things we need to do to get to the safety of an effective vaccine. We entrusted these people with the responsibility of leadership, and they have failed spectacularly. They will bear that failure on their souls for the remainder of their lives. We must not let them forget it. Not because revenge is going to somehow atone for those 284,005 deaths. No, instead we must publicly recognize these moral failures, and identify those responsible and the actions they failed to take, in order to properly face the next disaster. Only through future commitment to responsible leadership and collective action can we make the deaths of all those have died from Covid-19, and all those who still will in future, not be in vain.