Was Jesus Quarantined?
On Twitter, Jeff Tucker asked me to review his recent article using Jesus’ healing of a leper to comment on our current crisis. Let me summarize my two main reactions, and then elaborate on them:
- Contrary to the title of Jeff’s article, I actually don’t think the Bible account is saying Jesus was put into quarantine.
- I understand where Jeff is coming from about the authorities using fear to manipulate people etc., but the vibe I was getting from his commentary rubbed me the wrong way. He doesn’t literally come out and say it, but I got the sense from Jeff’s discussion that anybody who is being really careful about staying away from people who might be carrying the coronavirus, is acting in a judgmental/reactionary manner. And since I’ve been telling people how my (very vulnerable) wife and I have adopted extreme measures of caution, this type of reaction rubbed me the wrong way.
Now to elaborate:
Let me confess that at first, I thought Jeff was right, that Jesus had been banned from cities because people feared He had contracted leprosy, and it blew my mind. Here is the ESV of Mark 1: 40-45:
Jesus Cleanses a Leper
40 And a leper[h] came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” 41 Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” 42 And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 43 And Jesus[i] sternly charged him and sent him away at once, 44 and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” 45 But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter.
So like I said, at first this blew my mind, because it had never occurred to me that perhaps people were afraid that Jesus had become diseased Himself.
However, upon further review, the interpretation I had always given this passage, still seems to be correct to me. For one thing, there are other examples where Jesus performs a miracle, and instructs the beneficiary to keep quiet about it. E.g. Mark 7:
Jesus Heals a Deaf Man
31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32 And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. 34 And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35 And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 And Jesus[h] charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
And from Luke 8:
Jesus Heals a Woman and Jairus’s Daughter
40 Now when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him. 41 And there came a man named Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue. And falling at Jesus’ feet, he implored him to come to his house, 42 for he had an only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she was dying.
As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. 43 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians,[f] she could not be healed by anyone. 44 She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased. 45 And Jesus said, “Who was it that touched me?” When all denied it, Peter[g] said, “Master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you!” 46 But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.” 47 And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. 48 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”
49 While he was still speaking, someone from the ruler’s house came and said, “Your daughter is dead; do not trouble the Teacher any more.” 50 But Jesus on hearing this answered him, “Do not fear; only believe, and she will be well.” 51 And when he came to the house, he allowed no one to enter with him, except Peter and John and James, and the father and mother of the child. 52 And all were weeping and mourning for her, but he said, “Do not weep, for she is not dead but sleeping.” 53 And they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. 54 But taking her by the hand he called, saying, “Child, arise.” 55 And her spirit returned, and she got up at once. And he directed that something should be given her to eat. 56 And her parents were amazed, but he charged them to tell no one what had happened.
So the fact that Jesus also instructed the leper (in Mark 1) to tell no one, shouldn’t necessarily make us think Jesus didn’t want to be ostracized (as Jeff interprets it). This is a standard thing for Jesus when He heals people.
For additional support, I looked up Mark 1 in three different commentaries. None of them explicitly had Jeff’s interpretation. Two of them didn’t really help confirm or reject Jeff’s interpretation one way or the other, but one of them–Matthew Henry’s–clearly spelled out what I had always thought was going on here:
[The cured leper] must not proclaim it, because that would much increase the crowd that followed Christ, which he [i.e. Jesus] thought was too great already; not as if he were unwilling to do good to all, to as many as came; but he would do it with as little noise as might be, would have no offence given to the government, no disturbance of the public peace, not any thing done that looked like ostentation, or an affecting of popular applause. What to think of the leper’s publishing it, and blazing it abroad, I know not; the concealment of the good characters and good works of good men better become them than their friends; nor are we always bound by the modest commands of humble men. The leper ought to have observed his orders; yet, no doubt, it was with a good design that he proclaimed the cure, and it had no other ill effect than that it increased the multitudes which followed Christ, to that degree, that he could no more openly enter into the city; not upon the account of persecution (there was no danger of that yet,) but because the crowd was so great, that the streets would not hold them, which obliged him to go into desert places, to a mountainch. 3:13 ), to the sea-side,ch. 4:1 .
So according to Henry, when the former leper told everyone what Jesus had done, there were such throngs that wanted to see Him, He couldn’t even enter any towns. He had to retreat to desolate places, and still the crowds sought Him out. (For what it’s worth, this website also says the same thing, though it admits the Bible doesn’t tell us exactly why Jesus so instructed the leper.)
Second, turning to Jeff’s commentary on American society’s reaction to the coronavirus, I’ll excerpt some of it below, to explain my reaction:
Most of us didn’t realize, until very recently, what a remarkable stain is put upon a person (or whole people) said to be diseased. Even people who have had the coronavirus and recovered (as 99% do) are right now regarded as suspect and treated as we imagine lepers were in the old days.
The biases have been unreal, and the policies based on those actions extreme. It began with banning flights from China, and then Europe, UK, and Australia, forcing chaos and social closening in airports all over the country. Then the separationism came home. State borders closed. Then it got even closer to home. Next town? Stay out. Next block? Stay away. Next door in my apartment complex? Stay away from my front door. Not even spouses and children are safe. Everyone stay away from everyone else and douse yourself constantly with a cleansing agent.
…
When you look at the incredible fear, paranoia, and loathing that the coronavirus has unleashed, you get a glimpse of what must have been a long-time human habit of suspecting others of passing on diseases. There is a remarkable power in that, especially if it only amounts to suspicion, rumor, bias, and smear, and it would naturally affect people who are different in other ways: foreign, different language, different social class, a different income group.
…
Then as now, the appearance of pandemic is a perfect mechanism for turning people against each other, and for power to grow, with shocking results. It will forever be etched in the annals of history that in 2020 Christians themselves were banned from their churches all over the world – on Easter Sunday – for fear of disease.
…
Once there is a rumor of disease, everyone is a suspect. If the suspicion falls upon any person, it was difficult to escape. People talk. People fear. They want that person out of sight and out of mind. Then as now. Especially without testing!
…
Next thing you know, “Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert places.” Yes, you know how this works. You got near a corona person who is probably that because he was near a corona person, and then that person got near you and now you are suddenly suspected. To the 14-day quarantine for you buddy!
This is fully consistent with everything we know about Jesus’s ministry. The parables and his life narrative are full of stories of breaking down biases, barriers, myths, and artificial walls of tribes, religion, class, gender, and political loyalty. …
Our times have reminded us that being called diseased is like other forms of social division that drive people apart and make them more dependent on power. It leads people to fear, hate, and separate. Jesus too not only addressed that topic; he lived it, even at the penalty of personal quarantine.
I daresay that someone reading this could be forgiven for thinking that the worry over the coronavirus is completely made up, and that if you put on a mask and avoid going to the store right now, you’re just like people who opposed interracial marriage in the 1970s or who didn’t trust Arabs after 9/11.
It will place my remarks in context if I mention that of course Jeff’s article isn’t unique in this; there are lots of libertarians posting memes suggesting that the people wearing masks right now are bootlickers who just do what the CDC tells them. (Of course, the CDC was telling us not to wear masks just a few weeks ago, so my household were rebels before it was cool. When we were in the hospital to deliver the baby, one of the doctors said to us, “Where’d you guys get those N95 masks? Are you health care workers?” No we’re an-caps my man, and I don’t want my wife to die.)
Jeff is obviously correct that the media is exaggerating the threat from the coronavirus, and of course the predictions about the # of deaths have been wildly off. Every time I have discussed this topic, I have given the standard disclaimer that government coercion is not justified, even if the threat were as bad as some of the epidemiologists warned.
Nonetheless, Jeff asked me for my reaction to his piece, and so there it is. I have seen a lot of libertarians mocking people–e.g. for wearing a mask in your own car, which makes perfect sense for various scenarios–who don’t deserve it. I realize I have a special personal stake in this, and probably my smug stuff I wrote after 9/11 when I was still a grad student would have rubbed the families of WTC victims the wrong way. So I’m not writing this current post to make anybody feel bad or to cast judgement, I’m just pointing out that this particular coronavirus episode has really opened my eyes to how “regular people” perceive libertarians.
It would be an utterly preposterous thing to believe or say that “anybody who is being really careful about staying away from people who might be carrying the coronavirus, is acting in a judgmental/reactionary manner.”
I cannot imagine where you got that from. As an adult especially if you are vulnerable, you definitely want to stay away from diseases! That’s just good sense. Why am I even having to type these words?
Nor do I think the Coronavirus is “completely made up” — that is totally idiotic. Again, why am I having to type these words?
What I am drawing attention to here, and the whole point of my article, is to show how the rumor and stigma of disease even when it is only rumor and not reality can wreck a person’s life — our desire to stay away from everyone (in the pre-modern habit before germ theory) can actually wreck a social order through panic and complete and pointless breakdown and building walls where there need be none. I used a case from Jesus’ life to illustrate the point.
That was the point of the essay, which I thought was perfectly obvious.
In closing, once again to repeat a point I should never have to make, you should certainly stay away from actual diseases if you are vulnerable. Good hygiene. Don’t sneeze and cough on others, and so on. And this happens very routinely in a non-lockdown society — e.g. older people know for sure to stay away from crowds and things in the flu season. Government doesn’t need to tell anyone this!
By the way, I’m been saying the same thing on this topic for fully 15 years, and I’ve been writing on COVID since late January with the exact same message. Society can manage pandemics better than the state.
Anyway, Bob, thank you for reading and commenting. I do think your corrective here is directed at someone other than I.
“I cannot imagine where you got that from. As an adult especially if you are vulnerable, you definitely want to stay away from diseases! That’s just good sense. Why am I even having to type these words?”
If a fellow libertarian (and someone who has known you for years) has this reaction to what you wrote, then maybe you are mistaken about how your article comes across.
Jeff wrote:
“It would be an utterly preposterous thing to believe or say that “anybody who is being really careful about staying away from people who might be carrying the coronavirus, is acting in a judgmental/reactionary manner.”
I cannot imagine where you got that from. As an adult especially if you are vulnerable, you definitely want to stay away from diseases! That’s just good sense. Why am I even having to type these words?
Nor do I think the Coronavirus is “completely made up” — that is totally idiotic. Again, why am I having to type these words?”
Jeff, the analogy you picked was Jesus and a leper. And you said in your article that there probably was nothing even wrong with the guy, that Jesus didn’t really “cure” him but instead just used His moral authority to shatter the baseless prejudices of the time, for the community that believed in this disease that probably wasn’t even real.
You actively mocked all of the measures that have been taken in the US in response, including the idea of quarantining someone who has been in contact with a known infected person.
Regarding today, you said, “Once there is a rumor of disease, everyone is a suspect.”
Not, “Once a genuine disease breaks out, everyone is a suspect.”
On the other hand, you didn’t even have a throw-away line about “Now of course, there is a real threat here, I’m just saying we are going overboard…” No, there is not even a nod in that direction.
So that’s why your article gave me that impression.
In Jeff Tucker’s defense, that isn’t at all the impression I got from his article.
It’s like… if I wrote something about how much I dislike forced drugging, and then someone responded that they thought I was disrespecting their choice to take drugs voluntarily, it would take me a moment to register how they came to that conclusion. It would be an unexpected response, because an article or blog post or whatever against forced drugging is clearly an article about the importance of consent in medicine, focusing on the subtopic of forced drugging. Taking drugs voluntarily is also consent, so, at first thought, it wouldn’t make sense to me why they would feel that me standing up for my own right not to take drugs somehow was disrespectful to their decision to take drugs, both decision being based upon consent or lack thereof
Like, yeah, when I really think about it, I could see how someone could feel disrespected that I don’t want to (just as hypothetical example, not a real life example) take psychiatric drugs just because I am depressed. If they feel that taking psychiatric drugs is the correct answer to depression, and I don’t, so I do something different, like take a walk in the forest, that could make them feel emotionally invalidated.
But, if that’s what they take away from it, they’re kind of missing the point, which is that my decision to take psychiatric drugs or not take psychiatric drugs needs to be based on my consent or lack thereof, not about making them feel emotionally validated about their own decision.
And when I really think about it, Craig Beck, a person who helps people to quit drinking article, actually explains the psychology of this.
Note that I am not trying to imply that either wearing a mask or not wearing a mask is an obviously self-destructive act like drinking alcohol. (Well, unless you keep a mask on that is obviously causing you breathing difficulties, but barring anything really obvious like that.) My point in quoting Craig Back is only that people can get upset and feel disrespected when other people make different choices than they do. Even if you are just making a choice for yourself and not trying to insist they follow.
Also… earlier you seemed to think one of my neighbors put a mask on an infant. That wasn’t quite how it went. My locality passed a mask requirement law that did not include exceptions for either infants nor for people with medical problems who shouldn’t wear a mask because of said medical problems (e.g. breathing difficulties while wearing mask). I complained about the lack of exemptions, and also that cloth masks are possibly worse than useless (according to at least one study), got screamed at that I needed to be silenced immediately etc. Which I guess implies that they really believe infants should be masked.
Anyway, link to Craig Beck’s thing.
https://www.stopdrinkingexpert.com/peer-pressure-to-drink-alcohol/
“It’s true that when you quit drinking, a lot of your drinking buddies are going to get upset and try their very best to get you off the wagon. Their reason for doing this is mainly subconscious. Your decision to stop drinking poison for fun highlights the stupidity of their own behavior around this drug.”
“By raising your standards you have caused them a huge amount of psychological pain.”
“At this point, they have two options. They can also stop drinking and raise their standards to your new level. Or they can try and get you to drink again, perhaps an easier path to the same result.”
“So, your drinking buddies suggest that you are not as much fun as before, are boring or that perhaps even that ‘you’ve changed’. A vague but powerfully negative suggestion.”
“They will say anything to get you back in the club. This is the primary form of peer pressure to drink that us sober folk encounter.”
random person, what about this line?
“Not even spouses and children are safe. Everyone stay away from everyone else and douse yourself constantly with a cleansing agent. “
Are government laws currently saying spouses and children can’t stay together? Does the law require you to constantly douse yourself with a cleansing agent?
No, Jeff is obviously writing about more than just government measures. He is talking about the response of the community.
Kind of like, how in Biblical times, it wasn’t the Roman authorities who “treated people like lepers,” it was the community.
I mean, sure, there’s more than one way you can read that, and now that you point it out, I can see why you read it that way.
That said…
Government is an abstract concept.
Laws can be broken. And often are.
Looking again at Jeff Tucker’s article, he also says, “Every time there is a crisis, we are told the same thing: you can’t be free; instead you must obey.”
“must obey”
I attended a Telephone Town Hall organized by one of my senators. One of the participants who got a chance to speak wanted to know why there wasn’t a nationwide lockdown yet, to tell us that her husband had died of COVID-19, and to tell us to take this seriously and do what the doctor says, not what Trump says. (I guess Trump must have recently said something against the lockdowns. And the doctor in question was probably the one the senator invited to the call.)
Now, of course, the fact that this woman lost her husband is a terrible tragedy. Very very sad. But her response to his death reflects her political views.
We could just as easily imagine someone saying, “I lost my husband to COVID-19, and then I found out afterwards that there’s a vitamin C treatment that could have saved his life. Don’t listen to the doctors, do your own research!” (This is just intended as an example of what someone could think, not an endorsement of vitamin C specifically.)
Or we could imagine someone who lost her husband to COVID-19 saying any number of other possible things, depending on her political, religious, and medical views.
Except that, in the United States at least, people who believe in things like vitamin C (or whatever, that’s just an example) tend to be a lot quieter, at least in public, than people who believe in doing whatever the doctors say. There’s a strong cultural pressure to do what doctors say — a culture that is encouraged by free speech crackdowns from the FDA — and this is currently resulting in people asking their senators/other officials to basically impose medical dictatorship on others, e.g. mandatory lockdowns.
So, how does one criticize people who want to make us all obey the doctors, while still being respectful of people who voluntarily choose to obey the doctors but don’t seem determined to push their choice on the rest of us?
I don’t have an answer to that question, really, but I would like to point out that the lockdown in India is killing people.
“Indians Forced Into Quarantine Are Dying in Lockdown—but Not From Coronavirus: For Indians Living on $1.90 a Day, a Forced Lockdown Is a Death Sentence.” by David Gilbert
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjdye7/indians-forced-into-quarantine-are-dying-in-lockdownbut-not-from-coronavirus
“No one noticed when an 82-year-old man, forced into quarantine after returning from a trip to another state, died in his home in the village of Mohammadpur Khala in Uttar Pradesh.”
“His neighbors, who had refused to go near the man’s house out of fear he had brought back the coronavirus with him, only noticed something was wrong when the stench from his decomposing body became overwhelming.”
“Elsewhere in India, farmers are taking their own lives because they can’t get laborers to harvest their crops. Police are accused of beating lockdown violators to death. Migrant workers are dropping dead after being forced to walk hundreds of miles home. Alcoholics are dying from drinking methanol because all alcohol sales have been banned. Children are dying of starvation.”
“These deaths and hundreds of others all have one thing in common. They have been caused by the draconian lockdown measures introduced by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The lockdown, announced with just hours of notice last month, was implemented without proper provisions and support to protect the hundreds of millions of Indians who struggle to survive on $1.90 a day or less.”
I would categorize those statements under the literary technique known as “Trumpian exaggeration”. It’s slightly over the top, as a device for comic effect. You get a bigger belly laugh when you happen to be Commander in Chief of a nuclear armed military force, but regular authors still pull out a chuckle here and there.
Sadly … the “Onion Principle” kicks in these days, and if you attempt to be outrageous, you rapidly discover that reality has already caught up. Consider that the WHO is literally talking about pulling individual members out of a household and holding those people in isolation until they are blessed by the Healthcare Priesthood. So yeah, they are exploring breaking up families as the next step, although the laws are not written yet.
In Australia there are now two doormen at the front of each shop, the first guy counts how many people are in the shop and forces any additional people to line up in the carpark, while the second squirts each customer with hand sanitizer. I don’t think this is a genuine private initiative, I’m fairly sure it’s some government Health Expert coming up with this stuff. Does it help? Maybe…
Tel: “Sadly … the “Onion Principle” kicks in these days, and if you attempt to be outrageous, you rapidly discover that reality has already caught up.”
Excellent point. China already started separating families as far back as February 2.
“‘Out-of-home quarantine’ measures in China helped limit spread of COVID-19, epidemiologists say: Canada’s official advice to those with mild symptoms is to ‘isolate yourself at home,’ in a separate room. But Chinese researchers point to centralized quarantine as a key reason Wuhan was able to limit the virus’s spread” by Nathan Vanderklippe
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-out-of-home-quarantine-measures-in-china-helped-limit-spread-of/
“Ten days after locking down the city of Wuhan, Chinese authorities took another dramatic step to curtail a viral outbreak – and civil liberties: Beginning Feb. 2, officials forced into “centralized quarantine” anyone with a fever and people who had been in close contact with someone believed to be infected by the novel coronavirus.”
“In the weeks that followed, thousands of people were taken from their homes and forcibly placed in hotels, dormitories, convention centres and even converted classrooms at Communist Party schools.”
This is from Nebraska…
https://kneb.com/regional-news/university-prepared-to-provide-quarantine-space-for-community/
It doesn’t say whether it will be voluntary or involuntary, but from what we’ve seen so far, it doesn’t take long for voluntary measures to become involuntary, because some people get upset that others aren’t following the voluntary measures, and ask for them to become mandatory.
“Former police officer arrested in park for throwing ball with daughter due to coronavirus social distancing rules: The police department has apologized for the arrest, calling it an “overreach”” by Jeffrey Cook, Clayton Sandell and Jennifer Leong
https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-officer-arrested-park-throwing-ball-daughter-due/story?id=70032966
“In an incident caught on video, a former Colorado State Patrol trooper said he was handcuffed in front of his 6-year old daughter on a near-empty softball field Sunday by Brighton police officers enforcing social distancing rules. The department apologized Tuesday afternoon, calling the incident an “overreach by our police officers.””
“Matt Mooney, 33, told ABC News he walked with his wife and daughter from their home to a nearby park Sunday to play softball.”
“”We’re just having a good time, not near anybody else. The next closest person is at least 15 feet away from me and my daughter at this point,” Mooney told ABC News.”
“Lenore Skenazy: Kids Deserve Pandemic Playtime Without Their Parents Getting Arrested”
https://magicvalley.com/opinion/columnists/lenore-skenazy-kids-deserve-pandemic-playtime-without-their-parents-getting-arrested/article_b6d017df-1cc4-57bf-9817-38b620d569b2.html
“As if parents don’t have enough to worry about in the midst of a pandemic, last week, I got a terribly upsetting email from a dad who wrote to say that Child Protective Services, or CPS, had come to investigate him.”
“Not because his kids weren’t social distancing. Not because of any beatings or starvation or deliberate exposure to dangerous germs. He was being investigated for allowing his kids, ages 6 and 3, to play on their own front lawn.”
As to whether Jesus was quarantined, I will stick by my plain reading of the text here, and maybe at some point, I can do further research. There is a large scholarly literature on this topic and I have several important articles in my download folder that arrived only after I filed my piece. If I find more I will post.
Yes, like I said, I was intrigued by your suggestion, and you’re right, the line about the cities makes it sound as if they were barring Jesus. If you find anyone else supporting that interpretation, I’d love to hear it.
However, I should mention that from a theological perspective, this will be dicey. (Of course, the theological implications don’t affect what a secular historian would conclude.) The general thrust I’ve seen Christian commentators take on this stuff, is that leprosy in the Bible is a metaphor for sin. So, people really did have sickness, and Jesus really did heal them.
If your interpretation is right, it means the laws handed down from God by Moses were irrational and baseless, as opposed to protecting the community from a genuine danger, and it means the lepers didn’t really need a Savior.
Again, I realize that the actual history is what it is, regardless of the implications for theological discussions, but I’m just pointing that out.
FWIW, as someone who knows almost nothing about the bible, reading the passage i may well have interpreted as a crowd problem rather than a quarantine problem. Hard to know as the subject has poisoned the well, so to speak, but the crowd problem is cretainly is a reaosnable interpretation.
It seems clear that leprosy was not a disease of that time and location,. So the “lepers” of the biblical accounts were almost certinly not suffering from leprosy.as we understand it today.
Until now I had not known this. I had assumed that leprosy was common in biblical times, and when Jesus cured the leper he was literally curing leprosy,
It seems that he was actualy curing either something like eczma or scabies, or maybe nothing physical at all.
We live and learn.
“Jeff is obviously correct that the media is exaggerating the threat from the coronavirus, and of course the predictions about the # of deaths have been wildly off. ”
Uh… what? No; the media is dramatically understating the threat from the coronavirus, and the U.S. is going to have over 200K deaths. A tenth of one percent of New York City has died. What are you on about?
This is what makes people think libertarians are literally crazy people.
A tenth of one percent of New York City.
Each death is a terrible tragedy, to be sure, but, numerically and percentage wise, there have been plenty of times in history when many many more terrible tragedies have occurred.
For example.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/82/a1934282.shtml
And I’m not libertarian, so if I sound crazy, don’t worry, libertarians don’t get the blame.
Which media? Maybe Fox News is downplaying, but Trump himself endorsed 100-240k deaths right? You know I’ve been telling libertarians not to dismiss the threat right?
You have been telling them, and rightly so, but have they been listening?
I certainly have not been listening.
I get that there’s a threat, but the reactions in the direction of central planning are so over the top and so obviously being used to implement even more socialism – which, again, has lead to tens of millions of deaths through slaughter and starvation by governments in the fairly recent past – that we’re actually better served by ignoring the threat and going on with our lives.
The threat to lives from the loss of freedom far outweights the loss of life from the Coronavirus.
When you drive your car, did you know that it’s possible for anyone to swerve over and take you out, resulting in injury or death? There’s no barrer between your lane and the next – and usually no barrier between the lanes going one direction and the opposite direction.
You take calculated risks in your life everyday because *you, yourself* have decided that your own life is worth the opportunity to gain X.
And if that opportunity can be expressed in money terms, then congratulations on discovering that you, yourself, are capable of putting a money value on your own life – you’ve discovered something true about economic reality.
Now go and treat other profit-seekers as the heros they are. (Which is to say that profit-seeking, in and of itself, is not nefarious.)
” that we’re actually better served by ignoring the threat and going on with our lives.”
Yes, but you can argue this without downplaying the threat. Too many people try to achieve this end by dismissing the threat, rather than arguing cost/benefit.
“When you drive your car, did you know that it’s possible for anyone to swerve over and take you out, resulting in injury or death?” I frequently think about this, and this is why I am convinced that people in the near future will be stunned by our complacency in allowing people to drive cars rather than computers.
However, we do have a vast amount of statistical information about driving hazards. Whilst it is possible, it actually happens quite rarely.
“It will place my remarks in context if I mention that of course Jeff’s article isn’t unique in this; there are lots of libertarians posting memes suggesting that the people wearing masks right now are bootlickers who just do what the CDC tells them.”
I can say with confidence that libertarians aren’t the only ones who think this whole mask wearing thing is ridiculous.
Many of my neighbors are so radical about the mask-wearing, I can’t even tell them the CDC exempts “young children under age 2, anyone who has trouble breathing, or is unconscious, incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the cloth face covering without assistance” without being screamed at that I need to be silenced immediately etc etc because thousands of people might die if anyone listens to me.
I have a link for that by the way, in case anyone has neighbors who are crazy enough to think of putting masks on infants, but still have enough sanity to listen to the CDC warning them not to.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-cloth-face-coverings.html
(In response to below-quoted news article) *sarcasm* Because, clearly, a man is at much greater risk of getting or transmitting infections illnesses on a public bench, outdoors, than he would be inside of prison! *end sarcasm*
“Man charged with wearing mask improperly, leaving house without reason and attacking police” by Lydia Lam
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/face-mask-not-wearing-properly-circuit-breaker-covid-19-12665684
“He is said to have eaten and drunk at a public bench at a nearby block without reasonable excuse.
Charge sheets also state that he did not wear his mask over his nose and mouth at all times while at the public bench, instead wearing the mask so that it covered only his chin.
When approached by a police officer at about 1pm that day, Christopher allegedly shouted a string of vulgarities including “bloody fool”, “f*** you” and “f*** yourself”.
Eight minutes later, he allegedly raised his right hand and used it to push the officer’s hand away while she was trying to arrest him.”
…
“The penalties for incorrectly wearing a mask are a maximum six months’ jail, a fine of up to S$10,000, or both for the first offence. Repeat offences draw double the jail terms and fines.
The above penalties are the same for leaving your house without a reasonable excuse.
If convicted of cursing at a police officer, Christopher faces a maximum 12 months’ jail, a fine of up to S$5,000, or both.”
random person wrote:
I can say with confidence that libertarians aren’t the only ones who think this whole mask wearing thing is ridiculous.
This is precisely the attitude I mean. We absolutely wear masks if we leave the house and are going to interact with someone from the public. Then to show me it’s ridiculous, you point out your neighbors who put a mask on an infant.
Likewise, I can prove this whole “driving cars thing” is ridiculous by posting a news story about Florida Man.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough.
What I meant by, “I can say with confidence that libertarians aren’t the only ones who think this whole mask wearing thing is ridiculous,” was that, “I am not libertarian, and I agree that this whole thing about forcing people to wear masks whether they want to or not, even if they are covered under CDC exemptions of “young children under age 2, anyone who has trouble breathing, or is unconscious, incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the cloth face covering without assistance,” and also these attacks (usually verbal but sometimes physical) against people who for whatever reason aren’t wearing masks, or merely state verbally that they don’t agree with all of the details of the mask-wearing laws or interpretations of said laws, is ridiculous.”
For an example of a physical attack against someone who for whatever reason wasn’t wearing a mask, please see, “Unhinged woman slugs Asian lady for not wearing coronavirus mask” by Larry Celona.
https://nypost.com/2020/03/10/unhinged-woman-slugs-asian-lady-for-not-wearing-coronavirus-mask/
That isn’t to imply that you shouldn’t voluntarily wear a mask if you wish to do so. What’s ridiculous are the attacks against people who aren’t wearing masks, or verbally state disagreement with wearing masks (especially if the masks are on infants), even if they have a very good reason for not wearing a mask (or thinking certain people shouldn’t be wearing masks).
If a lot of people were forcing other people to drive cars, whether they wanted to or not, even if they were infants or had a medical reason why they should not be driving cars, that would indeed be ridiculous, and, being imprecise as people often are, I might summarize the situation by saying that this whole driving cars things is ridiculous.
I would have thought it was obvious that I am not libertarian. If that is part of where the confusion came from, then you may wish to check the comments section of your blog post entitled, “Estimated vs. Actual Mortality Simulation”, where I mentioned the word hunger 9 times, apparently. Three of those times were apparently the result of an accidental repost, so still 6 uses of the word hunger not counting the repost. I am sure if you go back and search the comments section of that blog post for the word “hunger” and read what I said about it, it will become perfectly clear that I am most definitely not a libertarian. Or, in case it still isn’t clear, you can look above in this blog post’s comments, where I linked a BBC article titled, “3 Million Dead in Artificial Famine in Bengal”.
Incidentally, you could also include people telling you not to wear N95s even when you wanted to wear them as being part of the ridiculousness of what I imprecisely referred to as “this whole mask-wearing thing”.
More broadly, this “this whole mask-wearing thing” as I imprecisely called it is part of a larger issue where patient consent is ignored in favor of following “whatever the doctors tell us to do.” (Or a sound bite of whatever the doctors tell us to do, in the case of people who want to where masks because the CDC says so but want to ignore the part about the CDC saying not to put masks on “young children under age 2, anyone who has trouble breathing, or is unconscious, incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the cloth face covering without assistance.”)
There is the problem of people trying to force “young children under age 2, anyone who has trouble breathing, or is unconscious, incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the cloth face covering without assistance” as well as other random dissidents who may or may not have a medical reason. There is also apparently the problem of people, such as you and your wife, being told not to wear N95s even if you want to, and even if you have a good reason for wearing them.
What these problems have in common is a disregard for consent. A disregard for consent is a very old problem in the medical industry.
See for example this article link that I also posted in the comments section of your post, “BMS ep. 116: A Libertarian NYC Doctor Explains the Physiology of the Coronavirus”.
“Doctors who ignore consent are traumatizing women during childbirth” by Rebecca Grant
https://qz.com/1146836/doctors-who-ignore-consent-are-traumatizing-women-during-childbirth/
I want to highlight one key sentence from Jeffrey’s article. He says: “Even people who have had the coronavirus and recovered (as 99% do) are right now regarded as suspect and treated as we imagine lepers were in the old days.”
This, it seems to me, is the exact opposite of the truth. People who have had the coronavirus and recovered are not treated as lepers. If you knew that your neighbor had had the coronavirus and had recovered this would make you *less* wary about being around him, not more, because you’d know he is immune and therefore can’t infect you. There are lots of people right now lining up to get antibody tests to see if maybe they had already had the virus without knowing it. That would be a strange thing to do if having had the virus means you get treated like a social leper. But in fact if you knew that you had had the virus then you could go where you wanted without worrying that you would get sick or that you would infect other people. So the analogy is just completely wrong.
It just means he’s been reading the news. And I don’t know, perhaps he’s also seen this first hand.
You are going through the logic of what rational people might do, but, as Robert Heinlein said, “Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.”
See “I recovered from the coronavirus. But I’m still living with its effects: When I recovered, my journey was far from over,” by Rebecca Frasure on the Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/24/i-had-coronavirus/
“I tested positive for the coronavirus on Feb. 7 while I was quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. It was a stressful six weeks, full of uncertainties, frustration, isolation — and finally relief. At the end of it, I recovered. But my journey wasn’t over.”
“My symptoms were mild all along. I had a dry cough and light fever for about a week; the symptoms resolved within three days of being admitted to a hospital in Tokyo. The doctors and nurses monitored my vitals but administered no treatment to fight the disease because there is none. Still, I was trapped even after my symptoms passed because, to be cleared and discharged, I needed negative results on two consecutive nasopharyngeal coronavirus tests performed 24 hours apart. The doctors gave me 14 tests over my 28-day stay, some just the throat, some throat and nasal, and in the end just nasal swabs, per the Japanese testing guidelines.”
“Although the test was readily available at the hospital, the results were taking anywhere from a day to a week to come back. It took three weeks for me to get my first partial negative result (nasal positive, throat negative). And then the results kept flipping back and forth. After 28 days in an isolation room within the hospital’s infectious disease unit, I finally received my two negative nasal test results and was discharged March 5.”
…
“Once we returned to Portland, the virus was already here. I was concerned about any stigma I might bear, not just from having contracted the virus, but for having been on the cruise ship. Once it was public that I had tested positive, I received threatening messages not to come back to the United States because people thought I would bring it back home.”
“The people who know us have been extremely supportive. Our employers, friends and family are thrilled to have us home and aren’t afraid to be near us.”
Just speaking for myself, receiving threatening messages is the kind of thing that freaks me out, even if other people are extremely supportive.
From the article
“It will forever be etched in the annals of history that in 2020 Christians themselves were banned from their churches all over the world – on Easter Sunday – for fear of disease. ”
I doubt it. I think the annals will have this very much a a footnote. But the important thing surely is whether the fear is reasonable?
“Most of us didn’t realize, until very recently, what a remarkable stain is put upon a person (or whole people) said to be diseased.”
He was born in 1963, so he was around during the AIDS period. In fact, we know he was because he argued against teaching schoolchildren about AIDS. Short memory perhaps?
Comment above was supposed to be a new comment, not a reply.