I think it's important to remember that hospitals are full b/c we have the ability to save people from an otherwise horrific death. They are full b/c modern medicine has kept patients alive long enough to have a chance to continue to live.
This must be factored into all our discussions about mandates & safety. Because, even if unconsciously, we are already factoring it into the risk/reward calculus of resisting such protocols. But this is not a freedom shared by those in the developing world.
Which helps us evaluate our own calculus--not of risk & reward--but of rights & responsibilities. What responsibilities do we have *because* we have access to lifesaving modern medicine when others don't?
Just left a comment on a FB post related to COVID vax. Saints, pray for me.
BUT on a related note... someone needs to look into how class divides are affecting people's confidence in vaccines. It's not about "trusting the science" so much as whether you know people you trust who are doing the science.
If you exist in a socioeconomic class that includes doctors, chemists, researchers, clinicians etc, you're more likely to have personal proximity to someone whose work you trust b/c you trust them.
Don't quote me yet, but I'm beginning to believe that the degree to which we are willing to own our particular sins is the degree to which we actually believe in grace.
It's one thing to confess the truth about human sinfulness. It's a very easy thing to do, in fact. But it's another thing to confess the truth about our particular sinfulness.
As a result, it's entirely possible to use the language of depravity & grace in such a generalized way as to make them functionally meaningless.
Obviously, certain people have higher risk of complications & serious illness if they contract COVID. That needs to be clear. Some people are more vulnerable & need more protection. But the way I'm hearing it used is more akin to, "This person didn't *really* die from COVID."
And the reason that frame is necessary, I think, is b/c so many folks have already bought the narrative that COVID isn't that serious. I think a lot of folks need to believe that they're safer than they are.
So I was up for at least 2 hours around midnight last night because my cat kept bringing live rabbits into the house.
As soon as I'd catch one & put it outside, the darned cat would bring another one in. (No, it wasn't the same rabbit.) A couple even ran behind the piano at one point so that was fun.
Around 1:30, I had a rabbit in one hand, a cat in the other, & a dog barking at all three of us.
Also, none of us should be surprised when people honestly think that their personal unease, discomfort, or "conviction" is sufficient grounds for a religious exemption.
The folks I know who think this way are not trying to game the system. They've just been raised in church traditions that centered their own personal experience of God as the defining reality of their faith.
I don't mean this cynically or jurdgmentally. But when people believe that the "priesthood of believers" means "primary interpreter" rather than "equal standing before Christ," they also can easily think that their "sense" about something comes directly from the Holy Spirit.