Eschaton and testing for Covid-19

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About a month ago I spent a day dragging my family through a crash course in coronavirus. It was appalling.

  • The range of symptoms is highly variable.
  • Carriers can be asymptomatic.
  • With over 200 mutating strains, the range of severity in this disease can be highly variable.
  • A person can be exposed to the mild strains, and still get hit by a secondary, more severe infection.

We put too much emphasis on testing. Testing would be great only if there were limitless tests and the tests were far more reliable than they are. If that were the case then we should all follow a protocol of weekly prophylactic testing.

Not feasible right now.

A few years ago my family started to play a modified version of a very complicated fictional tennis game from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. His version was very apocalyptic (fitting); ours was as well but with a fraction of the complexity.

In our version two teams of as many people as you have (evenly divided, of course) face each other on either side of the net. We divided as many balls as we could muster and started hitting them across the net relentlessly. The opposing team did the same. At a predetermined point (like music chairs), we would pause the game. The team with fewer balls on their side won that round and then we would continue.

Great cardio workout. Quickly exhausting.

That is coronavirus. We will all face an onslaught of a relentlessly moving, mutating virus which can spread quickly, if not effortlessly, through contact and fomite transmission.

Eschaton is a fun game.

This is not. But if I know one thing about how to “win” at eschaton, it is organize your team and don’t stop lobbing the balls back across the net.

We don’t play eschaton right now. Our tennis court is closed. That is a good thing. The best way to “win” at this is to assume we are all spreaders and keep us all

Six feet apart.

Pray. Pray because our lives depend on it. Imagine what a simple game of eschaton would look like if

God were clearly on

The winning side.

Matthew 17:20-21 KJV

[20] And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. [21] Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

18,000/3 weeks from today

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While my son brushes his teeth I take the number of people who have died by now from Covid-19 in the United States and divide it by our total population

Then I find what Day Italy had the same ratoo

Then I take the number of people who died in Italy today

And divide it by the total population

Then multiple that decimal by our total population

By this rough equation

Three weeks from now our fatalities will bave

Risen to 18,000

February 27th, 2020 in Italy

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I do simple math–100 divided by 360 million equals .00000028 times 60 million equals 17.

February 27th was the day that Italy stood where we are now. 0.000000028 Italian had died of Covid-19 and now 0.00000028 Americans have

Died of Covid-19

In 20 days they have lost so many people

More than 2500 (0.0042)

Three weeks

I am always haunted by three weeks

In the future (15,120)

And all the pleasant pictures

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I have been having the mildest of stress dreams–quirky, bureaucratic hotel check ins, attempts to gather the hard-to-shepherd, things washed away. I know why the dreams have come, and I doubt they will leave me soon, even if the heat and intensity of a gathering sun should cause them to lose their inevitable grip and dissipate

I turn to morning songs and croak out broken praises

Think I should listen to the Gospel, but chose Isaiah instead

Because these are old

And New Testament times

And we are all in wont

of fierce faces

Isaiah 2:16 KJV

[16] And upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures.

Our last pandemic

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A couple years ago my family went through a pandemic. It was a bad year for kitten parvo or panleukopenia, and we were kitten fosters.

We lost them all and watched the feral kittens at a local park disappear one by one.

It was devastating. Some shelters were euthanizing kittens on arrival. It changed everyone who was involved.

And I stopped fostering kittens. My kids couldn’t take it anymore.

Everything felt normal on the outside that summer. Humans all around us lived totally unaware of the chaos and brutal death we experienced.

I think about that summer every day. The numbers on this pandemic are not as catastrophic as the panleukopenia, but each death represents a wound to family, friends, and community.

I believe in hand sanitizer and sterile fields, but I believe in our eternal nature more.

We need to pray, to sing loud to God. We need to make our lives count for something eternal

Every day we have

Together

Coronavirus

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All over the world

Right now

People just like

You and me

Have begun to

Live in fear

Of our own

Invisible, creeping

Spinning, spiny, tiny, inevitable invisible crowns

Empty shelves

Where once cellophaned signifiers of

All that can be wiped away–

Canned food, pasta, string cheese, milk

Fomite transmission

You and me

Gone

Don’t worry, Darling

He took all our thorny little crowns

Smoothed each out

Like a girl braiding her sister’s hair

Singing some sort of song about

A proper crown for the One True King

Come to save us all.

The Irony of Leana Wen

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I have now heard a cool 3 times from Leana Wen, alternately billed as emergency room physician or former health commissioner for the city of Baltimore on how we can do various (good and helpful) things to slow down the coronavirus spread.

So where is the irony?

Leana’s last and most notable job was not being either an ER doc or a health commissioner, it was being the public face of Planned Parenthood, an organization dedicated to promoting and providing abortions.

Abortion kills a lot more humans than Covid-19. We could quibble at the death rate for the latter–1 percent to 9 percent depending on the demographics and strains.

But the abortion kill rate is pretty damn close to 100 percent. If an unborn baby gets exposed to abortion

He or she usually doesn’t live long enough to quibble

About omissions in Leana Wen’s cv.