NOTES, 2 APRIL 2020

April is indeed the cruelest month, this year for sure. A glorious springtime of beautiful new life contrasts starkly with the darkness of sickness and death all around us. It is as if morning and night are clashing in a titanic battle for humankind. The light will win, but God only knows how much suffering we will have to endure before then. It is looking worse and worse by the minute. April is cruel.

As all of my readers know, I am a great believer in information. One cannot have too much of it. This is because I have always believed the ancient Greek principle that it is better to know the truth even if it hurts because truth leads to wisdom. And, so, we need to pay attention to the statistics at hand and know where we are going in this terrifying plague.

Worldometer is reporting now nearly a million cases in the world (954,367) and a total of 48,555 deaths. In the last twenty-four hours, there were 81,359 new cases and over 5,000 deaths around the globe. This means the virus is doubling victims every three to four days. It does not take a mathematician to see where this is going.

The United States leads the world in infections by far, now with 215,357 cases, up nearly 27,000---in one day! As for deaths, a thousand Americans died of the virus in the last twenty-four hours, bringing the total of dead in the U.S. to 5,113. At this rate, the death figure is doubling every four days. If we do a little figuring, we can see the projections of 100,000 to 240,000 Americans dead is very low. According to my calculation, if the number of dead in U.S. doubles every four days, we will have 660,000 dead by April 30. The number of infected will be in the millions. This may seem unbelievable now, but look at what happened in the month of March when the case numbers in the U.S. moved from 86 to nearly 200,000. The virus is spreading geometrically. 

In the vacuum of national leadership in this hour of crisis, states and localities are on their own to go to war as best they can. We see a patchwork of local responses from strict to non-existent. The governor of Florida finally issued a stay-put order but included many exemptions, such as churches.

Should churches reopen now, at least in places as Florida where they are permitted to do so? Absolutely not. Ask the people of St. Andrew's church of Mt. Pleasant about what the virus can do. In Lee County (Auburn-Opelika) AL, doctors determined that the high rate of infections/deaths there was directly caused by church attendance. Near Tampa, a mega-church pastor defied local orders and called people to church where they embraced, shook hands and the like. They said defying the virus was a statement of "faith." The sheriff arrested the pastor. Who displayed common sense there, the pastor or the sheriff? It's a no-brainer. Bottom-line, churches absolutely should not hold in-person gatherings for the duration of the pandemic. Anything otherwise would be reckless, irresponsible, and possibly legally liable.

Finally, people are giving up lots of things in this crisis. Now comes the cancellation of the annual mullet toss at the Flora-Bama. This is always one of the wildest drunken carnivals on the red-neck riviera drawing hordes of people looking for an excuse to party. This year's toss, scheduled for April, has been postponed. This is wise. Louisiana is now paying big time for Mardi Gras as Florida is paying for the Super Bowl. We can toss mullets later. Find an article about the cancellation of this silliness here .

When I was a child and I asked my parents and grandparents how they got through the Great Depression and the Second World War, they all said the same thing, we got through because everybody was in the same boat. Everyone was suffering, everyone was sacrificing. No one sat and brooded over it much. They forged ahead. They did their duty for themselves and all the people around them. It has become a cliché that we are all in this together, but that does not make it any less true. We are all in this together. We do not, cannot, know what is on the other side of the plague but we Christians know that God will see us through to the end.

Remember that we are here for the living of this hour. Peace.

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In the "Say it ain't so" category, the story of the day is that Dr. Fauci is under security guard from death threats. Read an article about this here . We have known for some time that far right forces are out to get rid of Fauci because he dares to tell the truth. This probably means that Trump is under increasing pressure to dismiss Fauci. In reality, Fauci, and Dr. Birx are the only persons on the national scene standing between us and the abyss. If we lose them, we lose the war against the coronavirus.