BAD THEOLOGY.

Christianity Today's Paul D. Miller's sermon topic?  "It’s Time to Forgive Each Other Our Pandemic Sins."

First, let there be confessions and Acts of Contrition.

Christians especially can lead the world in an attitude of grace for the things we collectively said and did during a confusing and unprecedented time.

The pandemic was hard. Navigating the complex medical, political, legal, economic, theological, and humanitarian concerns was difficult. Few of us were truly knowledgeable about every aspect: The epidemiologist could tell us about the likely course of infections, but not the legal issues involved in lockdowns. The lawyer could tell us about public health law but not about economic tradeoffs.

The economists could talk about the effect on GDP growth but could not weigh that against the human cost in either lost lives or prolonged isolation. The theologians could tell us to submit to government but also to protect our churches’ freedom, and each congregation had to do the balancing act on their own.

We got things wrong.

Yes, including not understanding that where Nature, or Nature's God, poses challenges, a division of labor society provides a division of labor.  Two weeks in, which is to say, the time by which Our Political Masters anticipated the spread to be slowed, we noted "there are no solutions, only tradeoffs."

Michael Smerconish's Saturday morning show devoted a fair amount of time to the political economy of shelter-in-place responses to a pandemic.  The show poll question (scroll down) was "Is a universal quarantine worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health?"  The correct response is "it depends" and credit ought to be for your explanation.  Online polls don't work that way, and the response as of 9 am God's time was that it was worth it.

His show spent a lot of time, though, on the "it depends."  One guest was Stanford's Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine, who tackles the question, "how deadly is COVID-19/WUHAN?"  The short answer, which probably frustrates people no end, is "we don't know."

That is, there are two components that have to be measured first: the transmissibility of the thing (that requires serious testing of the infected and the exposed but not ill alike) and the lethality of the infection.

That's the same Jay Bhattacharya that Anthony "Giftzwerg" Fauci later slagged on at every opportunity.  Somewhere, Professor Miller lost sight of another reality: that while Jesus might have advised rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's, in a constitutional republic Caesar, or a president, or a special advisor on contagious diseases serves at the consent of the governed.

As early as the end of March, 2020, economists were, in fact, considering the tradeoff.  "We've been considering the tradeoff between risking mass contagion and risking mass deprivation."  Fortunately, we did not have mass contagion or mass deprivation of Biblical proportions.  A state of grace might sound good in the sermon, but in the secular world, accountability matters.  "When decision-makers make decisions we think are wrong, our natural desire to hold leaders accountable should be leavened by the grace that comes from knowing how hard leadership is in a confusing and unprecedented situation."  That grace is present in written constitutions.  We no longer crucify incompetent leaders or put their heads on pikes.