the crapshoot of contracting COVID ina conservative-run country

With numbers climbing as they are, this seems like a good time to point out:

Contracting COVID is not a moral failure. Restrictions and measures are not some kind of “prosperity gospel” where you Do All The Right Things and therefore God Will Bless You (By Keeping You From Getting COVID).

I know quite a few people for whom contracting COVID is a big danger to their long-term health, and that they’re taking what measures they can. I also know of our society’s (and specifically my own socio-economic-theological strata’s) tendency to link health, wealth, and happiness to “personal responsibility” as both Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Premier Dominic Perrottet do.

I also know it’s wrong to think this way. Morally wrong, socially wrong, philosophically wrong, intellectually wrong.

This last week, a friend needed it gently pointed out to her that, yes, it was great that the people ‘in our social circle’ were able to isolate, could afford to take time from their jobs on the possibility of getting COVID, had access to rapid-antigen-tests (RATs), were able to take the time to wait 3 hours in queue for a PCR…but this was not a capability that everyone had.

Yesterday, I had to rebuke a Christian FB site that implied disadvantage was the fault of the individual. “Don’t call me lucky, I prayed/sacrificed/worked for this!”

Sometimes life sucks, existence is a crapshoot, and bad things happen to otherwise unobjectionable people.