Christian author and radio talk show host Eric Metaxas discusses the Wuhan virus with America’s foremost public intellectual, Victor Davis Hanson. Both are at home, Metaxas in Manhattan, Hanson in the central valley of California.
Among the issue discussed is whether people who have no hope of anything beyond this life are so risk averse that they cannot make reasonable decisions in the presence of this plague. Even if the real fatality rate of COVID 19 is only 1 or 2 in 1000, if this life is all you have, maybe you do not think that’s a reasonable risk. But should the entire society be forced to abide by your extreme risk aversion, even when it is costing 31 million people their jobs, and rapidly shrinking the economy and the prospects of working people?
Caveat: VDH is a classicist and an expert on the Peloponnesian War (the war between Athens and Sparta, 431-404 BC) and Metaxas is ethnically Greek, and they get into a discussion of how the Christian Church incorporated elements of Greek philosophy into its theology. They speak of this approvingly, but I think this was a disaster, and an important reason why Roman Catholic theology went so badly awry.
Trigger warning: These guys are both conservative and lapse into political discussions two or three times even though the main discussion is the COVID-19 plague. So if you know this will bother you, please do NOT watch this video. You were warned.