Some random thoughts on the current state of the Covid discussion.

1. Has the battle against Covid become a religious ideology, one of the continuing “war against drugs/terror/fill in the blank” that we as a country have proclaimed for years?
2. At its base, has this become an American Puritan crusade? A battle that pits the true believers (more than one person has said, in saying that they accept the dogmatics of the covid fight, “I’m a believer”) against the infidels who question some or all of the Covid received wisdom?
3. I take it as a given that every person is religious. Religious in the sense of having an ultimate meaning in life, having an ethical code, and seeing the universe as going toward some more or less cosmic purpose, if nothing else than a “survival of the fittest” Darwinian construction.
4. (Even a stern atheism is religious in that sense, especially when reacting against Christianity. All the more true with other faith systems).
5. Anyone who describes herself as a “believer” WRT covid is expressing a religious sentiment.
6. Covid culture has earmarks of American puritanism. A god in the sense of a being to whom we look for good. Often a governor or some public health official.
7. Ditto, a demonic figure. In 2020, Donald Trump often served this function for covid believers.
8. Covid “infidels”: those who do not “believe.”
9. Need for external marks of faith: masks, vaccine bandages, vaccination certificates.
10. Fellowship – or not. “Social distancing.” Zoom meetings. Distancing has the marks of a carefully choreographed liturgical movement.
11. Not touching as a puritan function. Masks reinforcing the not touching. America is at our heart a conflict involving a puritan past. Puritans hate the realization that someone may be having a good time. This is not confined to one side or the other.
12. An eschatology: a damnation. Promise of future goodness post vaccine.
13. Closing and curtailing of bars and restaurants. Echoes of prohibition?
14. Object of worship: health and avoidance of illness. Echoes of SDA, health cults, Kellogg, vegetarians/veganism.