What should we believe about the current COVID situation?

It’s hard to say, for at least three reasons. First, most of us are not very good at science. I know some are, but I’m not one of them. When competing doctors start talking about viral loads, DNA and RNA I haven’t the least bit of personal competence to be able to judge the merits of the arguments. While there are millions if not billions who know more than I do there are many in the same boat with me. We are dealing with a profoundly complicated issue, with experts on different sides.

Second, we’re not very good at math either. Some of us struggle with some of the most basic math concepts. Every time I see a report that says .02 percent of the vaccinated experienced this or that I wonder how many people unknowingly read that number as 2 out of every hundred, when it’s actually 1 out of every 5,000. The gap between those two numbers is surely big enough to influence how we look at things. Yet many of us can’t tell the difference. In fact, many of us are binary in our thinking. I wonder how many lottery ticket buyers think that because they will either win or lose that such means they have a 50/50 chance. Once upon a time people saw education not as a means to getting a job, but as means to help people not get the wool pulled over their eyes, to think for themselves.

Still under the heading of lousy math, we all tend to be anecdotal thinkers, especially when we live in the social media neighborhood of the world wide web. That is, when our circle of friends includes people harmed by the vaccine, it pushes us in one direction. When our circle includes people who were unvaccinated and got sick, we think another way.

Third, and most important, COVID and politics have been joined at the hip from the beginning. When our information is coming to us from politicians or those working for them, we have every reason to doubt what they say. You know how you can tell if a politician is lying? His lips are moving. It matters little which side of the aisle it comes from. Politicians always have an angle and helping us know the truth is never it.

Still under the heading of lying politicians, we also face the challenge of over-confidence among the elite. We have been told we must “follow the science.” When the science does an about face we’re supposed to forget the old science and follow the new. In the meantime, the old settled science is plunged into the memory hole. “Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.”

What we should believe then is that we don’t really much know what to believe. We ought not to assume that the Democrat is always wrong the Republican always right, or vice versa. What we should do is fight against the state’s desire to enslave our thinking in preparation of enslaving our doing. We try, as much as is possible, to live in peace and quietness with all men. We obey God, no matter the cost. We rest in Him, knowing the cost He paid for us. And we rejoice to know that we have a sure and certain word in the Bible. Do not fear. Do not rage against the machine. Rest in Him.