When we focus on fear and stop caring for people
The real tragedy of COVID is the collateral damage it’s causing to the way we interact with other people. This is worse than even the deaths it causes. The damage includes a lack of civility, division in families, and people dying alone in hospitals because nobody’s allowed in.
From a Christian point of view, “the end is not the end”. We need to strive to “live at peace with all men (even those we disagree with on divisive social issues), so far as it depends on you”. Without that perspective, all that’s left is fear of death and division (who’s author is well known).
The medical system itself is a casualty of COVID. My wife got COVID and had gone two weeks without food or (my larger concern) much liquid and was lacking motivation to even do anything about it when I convinced her to go to her doctor. All they would do is a COVID test in the car. They would not even see her until she had a negative test. Her test was positive. So they would not see her. A friend at church is a nurse at a medical practice that is specializing in COVID treatment. They use alternate therapies, including Ivermectin and claim %100 success (e.g. no deaths). I was (and am) skeptical of Ivermectin … this “just happened” to land at the top of my news feed the morning I got up with the intent of researching it https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-than-you-wanted
But a) they agreed to see her when her doctor would not b) they got an IV (fluid) into her when she was severely dehydrated c) they caught the fact that she was developing pneumonia and prescribed antibiotics d) they had us get a blood-oxygen monitor for use at home, gave us a nebulizer and a prescription for albuterol with instructions to call them any time of day or night if her O2 levels got too low e) the result of all this was that she became interested in her own care and motivated to participate in it and f) I had the chance to server her in ways I usually don’t which has been positive for our relationship.
And she’s better now.
I’ll take “fringe” medicine that cares for people over “mainstream” medicine that lets them die because they are too worried about lawsuits and government edicts to actually care fore people.
The real tragedy of COVID is not the deaths, but what it is doing to the way we interact with our fellow human beings.