Lux Lucet

“[W]hen it goes down to essentially no new cases, no new deaths at a period of time.  I think it makes sense that you will have to relax social distancing.”

• Anthony S. Fauci, Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases

“I want to be able to say to the people of New York – I did everything we could do, and if everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.”

• Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York

Here in Ohio, we’ll soon be entering the third week of Governor Mike DeWine’s Stay At Home order, which requires Ohio residents remain in the homes unless out on essential business.  Only business deemed “essential” are permitted to remain open, meaning a significant portion of the state’s economy has been shut down by government order.

Nationally, the situation is much the same.  Perhaps no statistic better illustrates the severity of the economic impact of the government led economic shutdown than last weeks unemployment claim numbers which reached the truly staggering total of 6.6 million.  Taken together with the previous week’s total of 3.34 million new jobless claims, the second half of March saw a total of 10 million new jobless claims.  To put this is some perspective, the previous weekly record for new jobless claims was 650,000, which total occurred at the height of the 2008 global financial crisis.  The employment crisis taking place now is an order of magnitude greater

Is there any end in sight to the economic decimation going on in America?  If we take Dr. Anthony Fauci and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo at their word, no there is not.  Dr. Fauci wants to see new cases and deaths attributed to Coronavirus go “to essentially” zero before relaxing social distancing rules. Since social distancing is the driving factor behind shuttering businesses, this means that if Dr. Fauci gets his way, there will be no return to normal business until the China coronavirus is eliminated.

So how long will it take to get to the point where Anthony Fauci allows Americans to get back to something like normal levels of activity.  According to this article in ScienceNews, “probably not any time soon.”  The article goes on to state that social distancing measures will need to be in place, “for one to three months, at minimum.”  Based on this assessment, early May is the soonest we can expect a return to normalcy, and it could well be much later than that.

If We Save Just One Life It Will Be Worth It    

A common saying used by politicians concerning any question of public safety is, “If this measure saves just one life, it will be worth it.”  That sounds noble, but is it really?  In the United States, there are approx. 50,000 deaths due to automobile accidents every year.  Why do politicians even allow cars on the road?  Is it no a moral imperative that we ban the automobile?  After all, if it saves just one life, it will be worth it.  Yet governors, senators and presidents go year after year without banning the automobile.  Truly, they have blood on their hands!

Or maybe not.  We live in a sinful and fallen world.  There will come a day when those in Christ will not have to worry about death, but in our present world we often find ourselves having to make tradeoffs.  What if a law was passed by Congress and signed into law by the president that immediately banned all automobiles from American roads?  The number of people injured and killed in car accidents surely would plummet, and this would clearly be a good thing, right?

Not so fast.  If we banned all automobiles, how would people get around.  Bicycles?  Horses and buggies?  Walking?  Think about the impact that would have on your life.  Not only would it make things far less convenient, it likely would prevent you from doing some necessary things at all.

How would you get to the doctor for a checkup?  Or the grocery store?  What if there were no ambulances to take you to the hospital in an emergency?

Or consider the sanitary problems that would be created if everyone were to go back to using horses and buggies, especially in the large cities. Would this not spread disease?

America could go back to a pre-automobile economy, but almost certainly it would be a poorer, less healthy and less free one too.

In this world, we’re often faced with tradeoffs, such that if we want more of one thing, we have to make do with less of another.  This is the economic concept of opportunity cost, a concept which can be found in Scripture itself.  But demagogues such as Andrew Cuomo don’t want you to consider the concept of opportunity cost.  They just want you to look at the benefits, or purported benefits, of their proposals while ignoring the sometimes enormous opportunity costs.

For example, let’s suppose we lock everyone in their houses and for the next month continue the economic shut down that’s been in effect the past two weeks.  Is it not possible that there could be deaths caused by the shelter in place orders in effect in various states throughout the nation?  For example, I know of one local physician who treats drug addicts.  This person noted that in the past week there was an uptick in drug overdoses.  Could this be a side effect of Ohio’s stay at home order.  Possibly so.

What about health problems or even deaths related to increased drinking?  The Washington Post recently ran a story with the headline “As pandemic and stay-at-home orders spread, so does alcohol consumption.” According to the article, “The extreme worry and isolation sparked by the coronavirus pandemic is likely leading many people to increase their consumption of beer, wine and hard alcohol, experts say.”

So yes, Governor Cuomo can lock down New York to prevent coronavirus deaths, but this policy very well could result in deaths due to other reasons.

The Magical Money Tree

As a boy, I’d often hear that favorite parental admonition, “Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know.”  True that.  But based on their rhetoric and actions, it seems that those in charge of public policy believe that money does indeed grow on trees, or at least want to convince the public that this is the case.

On Friday, March 27, the House of Representatives passed a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill that, among other things, has a provision to provide a one-time $1,200 cash payment to Americans earning less than $75,000 annually.

There are a number of problems with this payment.  In the first place, it trains people to look to the government for their livelihoods.  The Biblical pattern is for one to earn his living from his own efforts.  As the Apostle Paul wrote, For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10).  Nowhere does the Bible countenance the modern welfare state.  If fact, it consistently opposes it, and this verse is just one example.  Yet by shuttering the economy the way they have governors have forced a situation where the federal government has to pass out checks just to sustain people who have been thrown out of work through no fault of their own.  The fact that the government has to put Americans on the dole as a result of its coronavirus response should serve as a clue that shutting down the economy to combat the spread of the virus is the wrong course of action.  Unfortunately, this notion is lost on our policymakers.

But it gets worse.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) called the $1,200 checks “cheese in the mouse trap,” by which he meant that they were intended as hush money to get ordinary Americans to swallow the much larger overall stimulus package totaling $6 trillion, which includes massive bailouts for Wall Street and large corporations.  According to Massie, the total amount of debt per family created by the stimulus package is $60,000, so clearly American families are paying out much more than they are getting in return.

But it gets worse.

The government has no resources of its own.  For the government to give a dollar to one American, it first must take it from another, either by outright taxation or by destroying the value of the dollar through the stealth tax we call price inflation.  In either case, the government is engaged in the immoral act of stealing, which is prohibited in the Eighth Commandment.

Government Officials Prosper While Ordinary Americans Lose Their Jobs and their Homes

One of the more irksome aspects of the ongoing coronavirus lockdown of America is that, while millions of ordinary Americans are being thrown out of work or find themselves at risk of losing their small businesses, the people whose policies have put them in this unfortunate position are largely insulated from the effects of their own bad decisions.

For example, federalpay.org indicates that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s base pay in 2018 was $384,625.  Considering the average American salary in 2019 was $48,516 for a 40-hour a week job, Fauci’s income is stratospheric by comparison.

According to OpenSecrets.org, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine had a net worth of $37,041,716…in 2006!  One would suppose that fourteen years later his net worth is much higher.  Yet through his decision to lockdown the State of Ohio, this multimillionaire has made it difficult for many ordinary Ohioans to even make their car payments, their rent or their mortgage.

Speaking of mortgages, Bloomberg reports that, “As many as 30% of Americans with home loans – about 15 million households – could stop paying if the U.S. economy remains closed through the summer or beyond.”  To public officials such as Mike DeWine, Anthony Fauci and Andrew Cuomo I would ask this question, what do you think the health effects will be on the millions of people who could lose their homes because of your lockdown policies?  My guess is, probably not good.

And while we’re on the subject, it’s worth pointing out that Americans who lose their homes due to nonpayment of their mortgages will have their homes repossessed by the banks that have been bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars.  Bailouts for bankers.  Eviction notices for ordinary Americans.  Is it any wonder why so many people are willing to give ear to socialists such as Bernie Sanders?

It has been suggested that those officials responsible for locking down the economy go without pay and benefits for the duration their policies are in force.  Maybe they should.  But even so, a man like DeWine could never receive another paycheck for the rest of his life and never be in want.

By pointing out the above, I am not trying to “wealth shame” Dr. Fauci or Governor DeWine – as a Christian, I am commanded not to covet “anything that is my neighbors” – but to point out that the decisions of these very wealthy men have a severe and lasting impact on the lives of ordinary Americans of the sort which they themselves are completed insulated from.

During his earthly ministry, Jesus criticized the scribes and Pharisees saying, “they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers” (Matthew 23:4). Fast forward to today and it’s hard not to see something of the scribe and the Pharisee in wealthy elected officials who put people out of their jobs at the stroke of a pen but themselves do not have to suffer any want as a result of  their policies.

A Better Way    

Instead of making arbitrary decisions about what is an essential business and what is not, perhaps it’s time we gave liberty a chance.  The big problem with the top-down, one-size-fits all solutions of the governors and health officials is that Americans are not some collective entity, by are instead individuals.

This is in keeping with Christian teaching which holds that the individual soul is eternal, while the things of this world are not.  Individual Christians are saved individually, not collectively, as they are brought to faith in Christ by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.  Christianity is individualistic, one of the things that makes it so hated by both secular and religious collectivists.

Instead of making top-down pronouncements without regard to individual circumstances, why not provide information and let people make their own risk assessments?  This seems to be a much more Christian approach than forcing businesses to close by fiat without regard to the circumstances of the people who work there.

As was discussed in this space last week, there is no Biblical support for civil government to regulate – that is to say, punish – everyone in the hope of preventing some future evil – crime, injury, sickness – from occurring.  The Bible’s theory of criminal justice is crime punishment, not crime prevention.

In like fashion, there were no government lockdowns in ancient Israel designed to prevent the spread of leprosy.  Individuals were examined for leprosy according to a detailed process.  Only after a priest had determined than an individual was infected with leprosy was he put in quarantine.  The way we do things now, everyone is put in quarantine to prevent the spread of the virus.  This is not in agreement with Biblical teaching.

It was the Protestant Reformation that re-introduced the idea of individualism to the world and changed the laws of the nations to which it came to recognize the liberty of the individual.  As the doctrines of the Reformation have faded from the minds of men, so too has respect for the individual.

Jesus said, if the Son of Man makes you free, you shall be free indeed.  He was talking, in the first place about spiritual freedom, that those who believe in him are no longer the slaves of sin.  But there is a political and an economic aspect to Christ’s words as well.  It is high time Christians spoke up to defend liberty, both their own and their neighbors.

End the lockdown.  It’s time to get back to work.