Prayer and Covid-19

Imported FB post from March 24, 2020

Many believers have said that Covid-19 is a punishment from God and others have claimed that it is a coy by the power of darkness to prevent religious people from gathering or praying.

The science suggests that despite being very new, this is a disease outbreak like any others in history. These outbreaks have a pattern, they come, they kill us but we eventually triumph, we win, we eliminate it and life goes on.

The Spanish flu of 1918–1920 killed about 50.000.000 people and the world did not end, the Asian flu of 1957 killed about 1.1 million and the world did not end, swine flu of 2009–2010 killed about 580,000 people and the world did not end.

Coronavirus has killed over 17,000 and instead of blaming, we should seriously play our individual and collective roles to reduce it’s burden.

Believing that it is a punishment for sin is equivalent to believing that a Covid-19 patient is a sinner and deserving of the punishment. This also gives the believer a false sense of purity and confidence that they cannot be affected because they are “children of God” (which I believe we all are). This leads to stigmatization of the sick and recklessness on the believer who can further spread the disease through over-confidence. Truth is, this virus doesn’t care about our religion. Priest and men of God are contracting it and dying from it.

Protect yourself, stay at home, avoid gatherings, wash your hands frequently. Prayer alone can’t protect you.