Samizdat #9

Disinformation and Freedom in Emergencies

COVID was an emergency in early 2020. We heard of overburdened hospitals in Italy, where entire cities were shut down. Hospitals in New York were so over-filled that COVID patients had to be placed in hallways. Nurses were close to nervous breakdown. Very soon we were all standing six feet apart, wearing masks and listening on TV for the next “grim milestone” of deaths from COVID. By the end of the year Pfizer and Moderna had developed vaccines for which the FDA had granted emergency approval. During 2021 the federal and state governments, as well as educational and medical institutions, imposed vaccine mandates, against which many people rebelled. The introduction of vaccines seemed to work, but in their wake, we found more strictures imposed. There were booster shots, recommended for everyone already vaccinated, and although COVID was understood to be a danger principally to the elderly, we learned that children and even infants should be vaccinated. All these were done in the name of public safety and based on “the science’.

Now we are learning that much of what we believed—based on the science—about masks, social distancing, the origin of the virus, and so on was false. We learned that trusted sources of information, such as the CDC and WHO, were not straightforward. It has come out that our own government pressured social media platforms to suppress voices that questioned the official narrative—even the voices of medical and epidemiological experts. We could (and as a people we probably should) explore the history of COVID further. But here we turn to a fundamental question: What can we believe, and what must we do about it?

That there was a pandemic is a fact. That many people, especially we who have attained to the Scriptural three score years and ten, were at risk of getting very sick and dying. We know, too, that sometimes a person must be quarantined. A soldier in my battalion was diagnosed with infectious hepatitis shortly before his expected separation from active duty in the Army. Even though he wanted badly to return to his family and girlfriend and all the benefits of civilian life, he was taken to an Army hospital, where he was strictly confined until his disease had passed. It was a shame, but it was necessary. Like the notorious “Typhoid Mary” (yes, she really existed) this soldier was a danger to others as long as he was sick. It was right and even just to hold him in the hospital, even against his will. And here is a first clue for a proper understanding of what we must believe. The requirement of a universal semi-quarantine was predicated on the proposition that every one of us is potentially a danger to every other one of us. It is a serious anthropological mistake to regard every human being as potentially a danger to every other human being. We are made for each other, for communion of life with each other.

This leads us to a second major point. We are made to love each other. It is an abuse of the concept of love to hold that I love my neighbor by avoiding him on the chance that I may have an unseen disease that I may transmit to him. Of course, if I have a flu, with coughing and sneezing, I should stay home from work or school so as not to pass on the disease to my colleagues. My fellow soldier had to be confined until his dangerous infectious disease was cured. This is not what we saw during the COVID lockdowns, when adults were prevented from visiting aged loved ones in the nursing home, when persons with symptoms indicating possible cancer were excluded from hospitals and other medical care facilities, when young children prevented from attending school. (Every parent knows that the first month of primary school is a time of passing around the bugs they have picked up over the summer. If one child develops chicken pox, it is certain that most of the rest will get it. This is why they must be inoculated against truly dangerous diseases.) Whether it is chicken pox, the flu, or a cold, it is the job of parents to care for their sick child. Concerning COVID, we knew almost from the start that the disease was not dangerous for the young, especially for the very young. It is almost always wrong to separate persons, whether young or old, from those who love them. By doing so we inflicted a very real and serious suffering on those close to death and pushed the young into confusion and loneliness. (A personal note: Our twin grandsons had to attend kindergarten electronically, on computers. It didn’t work.)

We are made for eternity, to enjoy perpetual life in the presence of the God who made us. God had Moses lead the children of Israel out of Egypt with its cucumbers and fleshpots into a howling desert where he molded them into a people peculiarly his own. There at Mount Sinai he gave them his Law and the Promise of their own homeland. It was hard, but they were fed and clothed. Under Moses they were well governed and at peace among themselves. We too are created to know God, to love him, and to receive his love in abundance. The most important call that we have in life is the vocation to sanctity. Not everyone knows this or understands it, but this does not make it untrue. We are to live for God. And if some do not know this, then we who do must bear witness by our lives how important this vocation is to us. Love of neighbor culminates in our sharing of God’s love with him or her. Therefore, it is absolutely wrong to refrain from giving God his due worship. No state, neither the totalitarian Communism of the U.S.S.R. nor the constitutional democracy of the U.S.A., has the authority to prevent Christians from worshipping God in groups on Sunday or any other days. Nor does the city of New York have any right to break up the crowds of Jews at the funeral of an orthodox rabbi. God is primary. Our duties to him supersede any responsibility to the state.

Happily, some of our Catholic bishops, notably Cardinal Archbishop Dolan of New York, have acknowledged that the American Catholic hierarchy may have been too quick to obey and too compliant with public authority. All our leaders should examine their consciences on this. It is a truth that the catholic faithful may not be denied the sacraments if it is at all possible to administer them. Military chaplains risk their lives to say battlefield Masses and administer the last sacraments to the wounded. Nothing has higher priority.

Before concluding, let me summarize. An emergency erupted, a worldwide wave of illness—a pandemic. In the confusion created by widespread disease and fearful patients flooding into emergency rooms public authorities had to move quickly and decisively with insufficient information. It was incumbent on the citizens of a free country to cooperate to the extent they could with reasonable measures. Very few of us could grasp what the disease was and what would stop it. However, we were (and are) capable of knowing and acting on some very important truths.

·      Human beings are made for each other and to live in community. To thrive, children need not only parents and teachers; they need the company of other kids. Humanity is not a disease.

·      Our primary obligation is to love. When our family and close friends are suffering or dying, we must be with them. It is a right and an obligation to help those in need to bear their burdens.

·      We owe God everything. He is our destiny. Before all else, we must gather to worship God. Our priests and other ministers must bring his sacraments and ministry to us.

We are not pawns of the state nor animals on a farm. The principal issue of the COVID experience is not that of balancing freedom and safety. The principal issue is that as human beings we are created in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, no matter what else—“come hell or high water”—we must live in truth. John Paul II wrote: “Although each individual has a right to be respected in his own journey in search of the truth, there exists a prior moral obligation, and a grave one at that, to seek the truth and to adhere to it once it is known.” We know some things to be true. We must live according to that truth. We must lay hold of our transcendent destiny, a destiny that transcends the conditions of the state and its requirements and live for the truth that we know.

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COVID is over (even if MSNBC says that it is coming back and that we must wear masks again).  We must learn the moral lessons from it. It has been sufficiently shown that our cultural and political leaders—government, newspapers and mainstream television, teachers and professors, “talking heads”, public medical authorities—have often hidden the truth and even lied about the disease. Indeed, these are the very people who warned us so often and worked to protect us against disinformation. COVID is over, but the forces that so seriously manipulated our lives remain. We must protect ourselves, protect our minds and our lives.

There will soon be another great emergency. The best guess is that this emergency is the climate crisis. We are already hearing more and more about the urgency of climate change. Indeed, the word “crisis” connotes that without immediate action disaster will follow soon. Certainly, there is much to learn about the climatic changes that our planet is undergoing. Climate change is real. Scientists need to continue studying the earth and its geological and climatic history. We are a long way from a complete understanding. To say this is far from speaking of a crisis that requires us to cease burning any fossil fuels to heat our homes, cook our food, and power our vehicles. As it is, however, we are already hearing proposals and even regulations that will significantly and even dramatically change how we live.

In a future Samizdat posting we can deal with the climate. But for now, we must prepare our minds and hearts always to live according to the truth. In 1974 Solzhenitsyn wrote to his fellow Russians:

“So in our timidity, let each of us make a choice: Whether consciously, to remain a servant of falsehood—of course, it is not out of inclination, but to feed one's family, that one raises his children in the spirit of lies—or to shrug off the lies and become an honest man worthy of respect both by one's children and contemporaries.”

Your mind belongs to you. You know what is true. Your heart and the direction of its love belong to you. You know what is good. Our challenge is to live not by lies, but to live in truth.