Pandemics as religious experience.

Religious, not spiritual. Spiritual experiences and religious experiences both occur in groups, but religion is more social than spiritual.

The COVID19/SARS2 pandemic is both a biological and social phenomenon. The social is as important as the biological. It is the nature of infection. I have written about the pandemic as cultural. This essay is about how it is like religion.

Religious behaviors are obvious if you look for them. Medicine has become orthodoxy. Doctors are the new priests.

To speak outside or against the medical canon law is treated as heresy at best and murder at worst. Doing so is seen as being an agent of the Devil, although in this religion, the Devil is not red, he is orange.

Heretics are ordered to be quiet, for they are surely possessed. They are threatened with excommunication (unfriending on Facebook), even in families. As in ancient days, prophets become martyrs.

How the virus works is the sacred mystery that only the priesthood can really speak authoritatively on. Even for them, It is the great unknowable.

Social distance and handwasing are the new purity. ER and ICU nurses and those who have died are the new saints. Being on a ventilator, the new Purgatory. Watch MSNBC for public veneration and excoriation. The News has become scripture and repetitive prayer.

To have COVID is to be cursed. It is both death sentence and scarlet letter. To have survived it is seen as hubris, with the inquisitory challenge, "have you been tested?" Miracles must be verified by the priest class. Fear is used by the priests to keep others in line.

There is both venial sin, COVID, and mortal sin. SARS. No one wants to die from mortal sin.

Masks are the new chastity belt, PPE is talisman and sacred garb (even for priests who no longer need it. The Faith is religious rather than faith, which is spiritual and personal. One must be as loyal to the faith as most were to the Church.

The vaccine is the holy grail, more holy than gaining immunity through the taint of exposure or illness (paganism). It is prophesy. It is the coming if the Lord. Look busy.

Sadly, I am not being humorous. The Pandemic, like Religion, is deadly serious. In religion, fear both keeps social order and defines personal purity.

Religion and pandemic are both useful, but the extent to which they rely on fear is dysfunctional. Just as no one wants to confess their sins, no one wants to seek medical attention. Hospitals are places of fear. Avoiding the admission of sin is deadly. It is how COVID 19 becomes SARS2.