Just as Aaron stood with Moses before Pharaoh as Egypt was smitten by plagues, so I shall accompany Steve Wohlberg (Fulcrum7 March 9, 2020) witnessing the world being smitten by the binary plague of coronavirus pandemic plus panic, altogether as unspeakable as the Egyptian plagues, in some ways worse.
Suddenly, the unspeakable is all anybody talks about. Among SDAs it’s even replaced WO and the infestation of LGBT safe spaces. Out there it has displaced climate change and both Gore and Greta, even Biden and Sanders. News channels have cancelled yesterday’s obsessions and most commercials to run ceaselessly repeating captions and loops of ominous-sounding fearful and imbalanced anchors, reporters, and round tables reporting, opinionating, and interviewing.
Certain historical plagues have been much deadlier, so far. The following data are as anybody can find on google. The bubonic plague aka Black Death of the mid-14th century wiped out 25-70 million people or 30-60% of the European population. It took 200 years for Europe’s population to equal pre-plague levels. The post WWI influenza epidemic killed 50,000,000 people, 10 times the number of direct WWI casualties, with an overall fatality rate of around 4% up to 20% in confined ships and barracks. Globally, seasonal flu kills as many as 650,000 yearly. So far caronavirus has affected, as per Wohlberg, 110,000 worldwide with approximately 4,000 casualties. As of the moment of writing this, total cases: 156,081, deaths: 5800. Estimates of fatality rates vary from less than 1% to about 4% overall, and up to 20% among the aged. Statistics-wise, the caronavirus plague has so far been pretty measly.
Perhaps one of history’s punier plagues, coronavirus isn’t so much about what it’s done to people’s health as about what it’s doing to people’s sanity. No plague has triggered so much hysteria.
Panicky people are afraid to shake hands. Instead they touch elbows or shoes, looking like a new dance craze. If a man besides Tom Hanks tests positive for the virus, he is dogged by a platoon of white hazmat suits from outer space spraying disinfectants more urgently than crews cleaning up after an oil spill.
Of no disaster has the whole world been so instantly and whiplashingly conscious. Whereas European awareness of the bubonic plague was in slow motion and took years, the caronavirus itself spreads over the whole planet in real time at the speed of light. The malaria pandemic (which kills about 445,000 people yearly) is spread by mosquitoes, but it wouldn’t be surprising if the internet itself transmits the coronavirus.
No plague has ever been so widespread. If the Egyptian plagues were limited to one nation, and the 14th century black death confined to Europe and adjacent lands, and small pox eliminated the New World’s endemic populations, the whole planet is already suffering under Caronavirus.
China, and everything it ships over to us, most of what we buy, is cancelled and, by domino effect, economies crash. For several days now the Wall Street Dow has dropped 2000 points, so fast it automatically locks down and holds its breath for an hour.
Quarantines are pandemic and fulminating. So far Congress, notably the part investigating Trump, hasn’t quarantined itself but individual legislators have announced self-quarantines. AWOL as self-quarantine can be the defense in courts martial, if not been cancelled, and win. I hate to think of the millions of Manhattan elevators formerly as crowded with white collars as sardines in a tin, now as deserted as ghost ships. Even obese CEOs are trudging breathlessly up 14 flights of stairs at the risk of fatal heart attacks. Sensitive masked gays aren’t likely to keep their hands off each other as advised, but do mutually splash disinfectants like perfumes.
Cancellations abound. At every level from school events, field trips, and band and choir trips, to political rallies, there already have been cancellations galore and that’s only the first wave. The whole NBA season has been cancelled because a single player tested positive. Also possibly the Oscars, the Super Bowl and the Tokyo Olympics, multinational war games, the annual Apple new product coming-out lollapalooza may go virtual and not up close and personal. Likewise virtual the whole LLU megachurch and every Sabbath school. The physical sessions have been cancelled. There’s talk of the Indianapolis GC not happening. LLU has just now announced that all “major events” are cancelled until further notice. Whether exams and the Week of Prayer are “major” was not stated. During previous great troubles like WWII, people escaped to escapist movies. But now the theaters – and churches - are closed.
Trump just announced measures extreme even for him, featuring a travel ban of all Europe. That could have helped 700 years ago for the Black Plague, but now? What does it mean that Trump’s extreme democratic package sounds rather the same as Xi Jinping’s communist strictures imposed on China?
All this seems to be assuming a strange life of its own. And it threatens to spiral into an exponentially widening death vortex, a black hole sucking in flights, jet fuel, hotel bookings and all tourist industries, all manufacturing industries, retailers like Amazon and Walmart, retirement portfolios, whole economies, as well as people, while spewing out propaganda, politics and the old stupid accusations of sexism and racism, trillions in multiple government programs mainly to fend off political accusation, gross hoarding clearing off the shelves, and government’s hammerlock controls of everything, and another great depression. And swelling incomparable panic, increasingly nebulous fear, free-floating fear, untethered, screaming and mindless, paralyzing – and unrelenting. Society is galloping around like a chicken with its head lopped off.
FDR in his first inaugural address shouted “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” However hollow the motto, it was calming. We knew exactly what we feared, Hoover and the Depression. Now we are afraid of… what?
Pharaoh knew what he was up against, Israel’s God. And he scoffed, until another plague hit. Jacob in a panic knew not with whom he struggled. We have developed the most advanced science and technology the planet has ever known, on which we rely like Pharaoh his magicians and priests, but which is able to say only, it’s a new virus, run for your lives.
This particular panic could well burgeon into a plague as deadly as the Black Death. Or fear of it could fade like Pharaoh’s fear after 9 of the 10 plagues, or ours after 9/11. There will be false prophets proclaiming a postmodernist whimsical peace, peace when there is no peace, with Cheshire cat grins.
But at the moment the media craves prophets of doom and is uncharacteristically biased against false prophets of cheer. The prevailing pervading sense is that this is but the beginning of something-we-know-not-what but dire.
But we believing Adventist know. We know of a surety the world is in for a time of trouble such as never was. A time of Jacob’s disoriented trouble. This caronavirus is indeed only the beginning. It is the beginning of End-times.
While the world’s face darkens over, are our faces brightening? Are we scared stiff at the notion of trouble such as there never has been? Or are we excited and elated, exclaiming, lo, this is our God? We have waited for Him! He will save us!
While the rest of the world is madly running to and fro, as confused as the Midianites slaying each other because of Gideon’s handful of noisemakers, we must single-mindedly and intelligently proclaim deliverance. While the others scrub their hands, we will have the latter rain. While many run for the caves, we look upward awaiting that small cloud no bigger than a man’s hand.
Lastly, we have always foretold national Sunday laws as desperately imposed as a caronavirus quarantine, but couldn’t see why or how quickly. Now thanks to the caronavirus, it’s clear. It doesn’t take a mere mass catastrophe. All it takes is mass panic.
Dr. Kime was born in 1929, in Los Angeles, California.
Kime pursued dual careers in art (since childhood) and medicine (physician; specialties in internal medicine and pathology; clinical and academic). He studied the principles of art, chemistry of paint, and the works of master artists as assiduously as medicine. After retiring from pathology at Kettering Medical Center in 1994, Dr. Kime has concentrated on his art, producing portraits, seascapes and figural work mainly in oils, and urbanscapes predominantly in watercolor. Dr. Kime currently lives in Redlands, CA.