New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Seeking God’s help from COVID-19 complacency
“My Lord, I am helpless, so help me” (Qur’an 54:10 – The Clear Qur’an Translation)
These were the words of supplication that the Prophet Noah (Nuh) – peace be upon him – uttered when he felt overwhelmed at the persistent refusal of his people to accept a basic truth after he spent a massive amount of time trying to make them aware of this truth.
After more than two years since the World Health Organization announced reports of a mysterious coronavirus-related pneumonia that later became known as COVID-19, and more than a year since the COVID-19 vaccine received U.S. FDA authorization, the prayer of Prophet Noah is appropriate. Many people can relate to his feeling of being overwhelmed. Medical workers are swamped by yet another resurgence of COVID-19 cases and the resultant escalation in the rate of hospitalizations. Additionally, many immunocompromised are beginning to exhibit dispiritedness after living with fear and frustration for more than two years.
Gayle King, co-host of “CBS Mornings,” seemed to hit the nail on the head for a lot of us when she recently said on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” that she was “sick and tired” of this pandemic.
But there is a rationale for Ms. King’s expression. She was coming from the perspective that despite maskwearing, lockdowns, social distancing and multiple vaccination initiatives, the disease persists. Society has been unable to achieve the threshold of herd immunity either though vaccination or infection, even as this coronavirus continues to evolve. Her expression gave words to what many are now thinking. That is, the vaccine is ineffectual in the prevention, transmission and spread of coronavirus, and the disease will become endemic. According to this thinking, the virus will continue to spread, and everyone will eventually get it at some point — so why bother? Therefore, Ms. King and many people like her now are at or beyond the point of restarting to live their preCOVID-19 lives.
However, there is a danger to this type of thinking. That is, the danger of fatalism and complacency that fails to consider the fact that more than 850,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States as of the beginning of 2022.
The memory of those who died because of COVID-19 should serve as powerful reminders that everyone has a right to life, and that we should each take responsibility to protect our own lives and the lives of others. In this regard, choices that we each make are unacceptable if the outcome of such choices increases the risk of death to others. For immunocompromised people in particular, the cost of complacency is measured in human lives.
Despite the increasing cases of coronavirus infections and hospitalizations, we must resist complacency. Complacency means refusing to comply with public health measures and thereby helping to give the virus free reign. Experts compare SARS-CoV-2 to the influenza A virus which caused the 1918 pandemic and predict that, like the flu, the coronavirus will become endemic. The goal of vaccination and other public health measures then, was never to eradicate the disease completely. The flu virus has continued to mutate since 1918 and to infect millions of people each year, even claiming many lives each season. However, it is less of a serious problem due to the relative overall mildness of infections.
The goal of public health measures for the coronavirus — with the ultimate objective of saving lives — is to either achieve herd immunity or similarly attain the point where the severity of coronavirus infections is reduced. We each need to assume the responsibility for saving lives with humility and due regard for others and help each other by sharing correct information, getting vaccinated and boosted and encouraging others to do so as well; and continue wearing masks while social distancing.
Until we achieve immunity or attain less severe disease, we should, like Prophet Noah, seek God’s help whenever we feel helpless or overwhelmed. God intervened for him and drowned out falsehoods. In the same way that I hope that God will intervene for us when we call out to Him to drown out misinformation about this virus. For people of faith who care about others, complacency is not an option if their faith really matters.