Plagues are bible-grade events. Highly infectious diseases that increase the mortality rate of a population qualify as a biblical event. Right now, we're in the center of one.
I live in a Christian world. Religions like Christianity provide much needed structure and meaning to people's lives. Why? They reduce uncertainty. Religion maps onto a world full of circumstantial tragedies a gridwork with a narrative direction. Acts of good faith garner the love of God. Conversely, God visits wrath upon acts of evil. But most importantly, God is a mystery.
Armed with the best in epidemiological science we have discovered that our plague originated in a mammal-jumping virus that infected a person butchering a pangolin in a wet market in China.
This act of discovering the route of virus transmission and its ground zero event does something to demystify the potential religious potential to re-signify a plague as the ubiquitous condemnation of a people by God for their wayward activities.
How are we to suggest that Covid-19 is God's punishment for our sins against a pangolin in a Chinese wet market?
The success of a virus depends upon its route of communication. And so goes efforts to fight infection rates. Like many viruses this one succeeds where people come into direct contact. People revert to living as anchorites, religiously following a routine to avoid infection. Those that endeavor to enter the public for basic necessities may resort to wearing a mask and gloves to avoid contagion. And it is in this gesture that we find a removal of a prime interface for the public and the production of 'normal' relations. As the expressive features of the face and body are covered, a psychological effect of walling off identity and 'communication' occur. It is in this confluence of the term for both sharing information and spreading disease that we find a very potent metaphor and reality concerning disease. Given the social nature of humans the diseases that we spread have evolved to take advantage of that pathway, to pass through normal, day-to-day contact.
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