There is a strong argument for not overdoing news at the moment. Personally, though, I find that its less about the quantity of news I consume than the quality of the sources. If they enlighten rather sensationalise then I find that helpful.
Both Radio 4’s More or Less and Gimlet’s Science Vs have been exemplary in this regard. What they have in common is a tone defined by apparently genuine curiosity, which they assume the audience shares. The teams behind them not only want to tell you what we know but also how we know it. This allows them to adopt an authoritative tone, which offers clarity without obscuring genuine uncertainty. It also helps that these shows can take the virus seriously without taking themselves seriously.
Recent events have also played to strengths of Inside Briefing from the Institute of Government. A lot of more conventional politics podcasts are essentially about inter and intra party competition and have struggled as those themes have temporarily been side-lined. A focus on public policy and the machinery of state currently feels both more relevant and more edifying.
In terms of specific episodes, Talking Politics’ interview with Nate Silver is a little out of date but definitely still worth a listen. Silver is not an epidemiologist, but someone who predicts politics and sports. So, he thinks about the models used to try and anticipate the spread of the virus in very broad terms. So, this is a very clear overview of the topic.
Speaking of overviews, China Talk’s episode on the politics of coronavirus ably relates what happened in Wuhan at the very start of the outbreak to the broader political climate in the country.
If you want something that focuses less on a global understanding of this strange moment in history and more on how to manage its consequences as an individual, then check out How to!not to go crazy under quarantine and beat your isolation loneliness from the Happiness Lab. They are both from the early stages of the lockdown and the advice in them has been helping me ever since.
Not about coronavirus (but also kind of are)
If you’ve not come across Tim Harford’s work before, he is essentially a social science communicator who combines the story telling acumen of Malcolm Gladwell with the intellectual rigour of someone who is..well…not Malcolm Gladwell. He uses these talents to full effect in Cautionary Tales. Each episode unpacks the reasons behind a disaster such an airship crashing, the wrong film being announced as an Oscar winner or a con man tricking an entire platoon of soldiers into assisting with a bank robbery.
By contrast, as the name implies, Chernobylfocuses in on that single (and singular) disaster. It is an accompaniment to the HBO/Sky TV drama about the disaster and is essentially a series of extended conversations with Craig Mazin, the show’s writer. It is frequently answering the question: did that really happen? To which the answer is usually: yes, it did.
Both were made before the coronavirus arose as an issue but given their themes will definitely give you a perspective on it.
Getting a break from coronavirus
At the moment, most of the podcasts I’d normally turn to for light listening have started running lockdown or virus themed episodes. So, I have been finding my escapism in some surprisingly dark podcasts.
In February last year, a group of masked men broke into the North Korean embassy in Madrid in the middle of the night and took the staff apparently under the impression that this would provide cover for a diplomat to defect. Instead, they left with just a few laptops and USB drives, pursued by the Spanish, Americans and most, dangerously, the North Koreans. A fascinating episode of NK News covers Free Joseon, the shadowy group behind the attack. The renegade band of characters populating this story and their “antics” are like something out of a Le Carré novel.
The second series of Monster on the Zodiac killings handles the perennial problem of true crime podcasts about unsolved cases not having satisfying conclusions by turning the focus back around on the audience. It becomes less about who the killer is than why this case still holds such a fascination and why for many people it is such a destructive one. A bonus episode on ‘the Accused’ develops this idea even further by examining how the desperation to unlock the riddle led to multiple different people being seriously discussed as suspects despite a near total lack of credible evidence against them.
Finally, Intelligence Squared has an interview with Kate Murphy about her book “You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters”. Which was interesting enough to persuade me to go out and get the book.
Despite the huge ramifications of her decisions, only so much is publicly known about “patient 31”. We do not know her real name or many details of her life before February this year. Nor despite extensive investigations by public health authorities, do we know how she contracted the covid-19 virus.
However, we do know she is a 61-year-old woman and lives in Daegu, a South Korean city of two and a half million people. We know that on Feb 6th, she was involved in a car accident that led to her being hospitalised and that whilst she was there, she developed a fever. We also know that on Feb 17th, she tested positive for Covid-19, making her the Republic of Korea’s 31st confirmed case of the virus.
Most crucially, we know she was a member of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus and that she attended the church’s services on February 9th and 16th, the latter time despite the fact her fever had already began presenting itself. Finally, we know that this was a decision that would have catastrophic consequences.
As her designation implies, coronavirus had been present in Korea before “patient 31”. However, most sufferers had either travelled to Wuhan and been in direct contact with someone who had. It was in short, thanks to a world-class public health infrastructure, broadly contained.
Then “patient 31” brought it into contact with the Shincheonji Church of Jesus. It spread first amongst “patient 31’s” congregation, then amongst Shincheonji members across Korea, and then to members of the general public they had contact with. As of March 20th, 5,000 coronavirus infections had been traced back to “patient 31” and the Shincheonji Church, more than half the total number reported in Korea.
There are particular factors which made Shincheonji an effective vector for spreading the virus. Its congregations are unusually large and during services they sit close together on the floor. It is also a secretive organisationthat is often branded a cult in part because it teaches that the Bible is full of secret metaphors which only be interpreted by its founder, a self-proclaimed messiah named Lee Man-Hee. Due to its suspicion of outsiders, it initially obstructed the health authorities’ efforts to trace and isolate potentially infected people.
That said, virtually all religious worship involves bringing people from different households into close proximity. So, it is to my surprise that I see some Christians agitating to physically congregate despite the risk of creating many more “patient 31s”.
Leading us into temptation
Missouri is one of those states that exempt church services from its stay-at-home order. This is a mistake. pic.twitter.com/PAU8zwJ980
An Ohio churchgoer recently earned herself worldwide internet notoriety by telling a TV reporter on the way out of a service, that she was not worried about catching or passing on the virus because she was “covered in the blood of Jesus”. This might seem lurid but of the 39 states in the US to have implemented ‘stay at home’ orders, 12 specifically exempt religious gatherings.
Nor is this a purely American phenomenon. In the Philippines, despite official disapproval from the Government and the Catholic Church: “Some…penitents flagellated themselves and prayed outside closed churches…to commemorate the death of Jesus on Good Friday.”
Even here in the UK, where churches have almost uniformly conformed to, or even gone beyond, official advice to physically distance, there are still voices calling for a more relaxed approach. Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, used a recent opinion piece for the Telegraph to argue that church closures were a mistake because in difficult times “we should be providing, rather than withdrawing, resources for strengthening and supporting people’s faith”. He emphasises the need for any gatherings to be social distanced – but nonetheless argues for churches to opened, and asks rhetorically, why this would be ‘any more dangerous than shopping in a supermarket or travelling on the London Underground?’
It is Tesco & others that seem omnipresent and God entirely absent from public discourse! Churches are places where, as TSEliot said, prayer has been valid and we come to kneel. Everyone goes to the shops, on the tube & there is street dancing & exercises so why pick on churches? https://t.co/clhAIyICUN
I submit these positions rest on a set of three misconceptions:
1. There is no religious immunity from this virus
Seeking exemptions from lockdowns for religious gatherings makes little sense, because, bluntly, viruses do not comprehend, much less respect, sacred spaces.
Any Christian tempted to imagine that what happened to the Shincheonji church was God enacting his wrath on a heretical cult – or at least a sign they did not enjoy his protection – and that, therefore, it could never happen to a more mainstream Christian church is ignoring one very basic fact: something remarkably similar has already happened to a mainstream church.
In February, a group of about 2,500 worshipers from around the world gathered for an annual prayer meeting at an evangelical church in the French town of Mulhouse. A regional public health official likened what happened next to an “atomic bomb explosion”.
One of the worshipers, must have been carrying covid-19. Within days of it finishing, dozens of attendees began displaying flu like symptoms. And from there it kept spreading. For example, a nurse who had been to Mulhouse carried it into a hospital, where 250 patients and staff became infected.
This one prayer meeting has now been linked to thousands of infections, hundreds of deaths and disease clusters on three continents.
That faith is not an effective anti-viral should not surprise us. God offers an assurance of salvation, yes. But this is spiritual, not physical.
Believers have been wrestling with the implications of this fact since at least 1755. In that year, a powerful earthquake and tsunami struck Lisbon on the morning of All Saints Day. The result was that when every church in the city collapsed or was destroyed by fires, they were packed with worshipers. So not only were the faithful not spared but they bore the brunt of the tragedy.
In fact, as two millennia of martyrs attest to: having faith not only does not reliably repel physical danger but can actually attract it!
I would, however, be remiss not to point out an important distinction between what happened in Mulhouse and in Daegu. As far as I can see, the French church did nothing wrong. At the time their gathering took place there was no guidance in place discouraging such events or advising physical distancing.
2. Closing churches does not mean the Church is out of action
Part of what make these deaths so tragic is that they are unnecessary. Gathering for worship is of course a hugely important part of Christian life. However, it is hardly of overriding importance.
In an article for Christianity Today on celebrating Easter at a time when churches are closed, Rev. Tish Harrison Warren reflects that:
“the solid fact remains that Christians do not make Easter through our worship…Jesus rose from the dead, and even if it were never acknowledged en masse, it would remain the fixed point around which time itself turns.”
What goes for Easter, goes for any Sunday. If, for reasons beyond our control, we cannot attend church for a few weeks or months, we do not cease to be Christians. We have never held those with serious illnesses to this standard and I see no reason why, in the context of coronavirus, we should be holding the broad mass of churchgoers to it now.
This is even more the case given that our ability to gather together without physically being in the same space is greater than ever before. Services can be livestreamed; study groups can meet via video calls, and messaging apps can broadcast prayer requests far more widely than a preacher in a pulpit. Clearly these options are not open to everyone – and even the most tech literate are unlikely to find virtual church a perfect substitute for the experience of an in-person service – but as a stopgap measure they substantially mitigate the impact of closures for many.
Of course, churches do more than hold services: they are also vital pillars of the community. But here too there are grounds for optimism. Bishop Nazir-Ali’s accusation that the church has withdrawn its support in the nation’s time of need because its premises are closed to the public is wide of the mark. Not only have churches made replicating their Sunday services online the norm, they have continued to be a huge source of charitable and pastoral support: parish priests have become temporary hospital chaplains, church buildings have become mask factories and congregations have taken on a central role in providing mutual aid.
It is a truism that a church is not just a building, but the lockdown has proven it afresh.
3. Love our neighbours
There is, however, an even more basic principle at stake. As has been reiterated many times by now: maintaining physical distance is not only that it prevents you catching the virus, but that it prevents you passing it on to anyone else. The practice combines concern for yourself with concern for others. For example, had Patient 31 demonstrated it, then she would have shielded literally thousands of people from harm. It is a way to “Love your neighbour as yourself”, which is after all one of the two commands Jesus declared the greatest.
This is why I take issue with Bishop Nazir-Ali equating the risks of going to church with the risk of going to the supermarket or taking the Tube to argue for opening churches. Not only does it ignore the fact that, both those activities are currently so dangerous that TfL and supermarket staff are dropping dead; it also, fails to grapple with physical distancing being a way to love our neighbours.
Not only does it ignore the fact that both these activities are currently so dangerous that people who work on the Tube and in supermarkets are dropping dead, it also fails to grapple with physical distancing being a way to love our neighbours.
It is not something in which Christians should be aiming merely to match prevailing standards. We must instead seek to be exemplary physical distancers.
After all, Jesus spent much of his earthly mission curing disease; if we are cavalier about spreading it, we are directly contradicting the example he set for us.
Our faith demands that we never risk the lives of our neighbours for the sake of our worship. Following regulations designed to protect the health of the population is not the same as capitulating to an oppressive regime trying to supress our faith. Rather, it is modelling God’s love to those around us.
Correction
When I first published this post, it stated that the Greers Ferry Church is Arkansas had met in contravention of social distancing guidelines. In fact, the virus spread at a service prior to the state’s stay at home order being instituted. Apologises to everyone connected with that church.
Matter Of Facts 