After the Pandemic
As I write this article, I have been locked down in my house for the last two months. I do not have a fever, sore throat, or headache. I do not cough, or sneeze and I have no trouble breathing. I do not have any symptoms of the COVID19 virus, but the government told me to stay at home as much as possible, so I obeyed, as did millions of other good little sheep in our country. Now we are told we can go back to work and go to restaurants and hair salons and barber shops. We can meet with our friends, but only in small groups, and we should make sure we sit far away from them. Is the pandemic better now than two months ago? No, it is ten to twenty times worse, but now it is okay to open up the economy and start getting together with people again.
What was accomplished in the two months lock down? Did the governments know what they were doing when they shut down the economy? We have to trust them. They are the experts. Many small business owners will go bankrupt this year, but that’s okay. We still have Walmart, Amazon, and several other multinational firms to take care of us. According to the government we are still in danger. We have to beware of the ‘second wave’ of the pandemic. As I look at the graphs of new infections versus time for the industrial nations, I cannot see that we have even finished with the ‘first wave’ and the poorer nations have not yet reached the peak of the ‘first wave’. The worst is yet to come for them. I assume the linear progression of total infections versus time will continue over the next two months. There are about five million confirmed cases of the virus in the world according to published statistics. I can only assume the number will be up to about ten million by the end of July, but with the economies opening up and more people contacting each other perhaps it will shoot up to fifteen million. The conclusion is that this virus could be with us for a long time. Did the governments really think it could be brought under control by shutting the economy down for two months? The effect on the economy is devastating. Perhaps we should have protected the old people and the chronically ill people and left the rest of society to go about business as usual with some restrictions and instructions on how to avoid the illness.
I believe in the next few years many countries will be facing something much worse than COVID19. Their economies could collapse. Many countries will default on their loans. We are facing a worldwide recession because of economies being shut down for this virus. After the last recession of 2008 and 2009 I wrote the following in an article published in this magazine: “After the recent great recession many people were without jobs, could not pay their bills, and began a series of protests, especially in the Middle East. They started blaming their governments for fattening their own bank accounts while the people suffered. Governments were overthrown in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and the Ivory Coast, but protests continue in other countries. Syria is the most volatile, but there have been protests in Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, and Jordan. Nigeria has had violent riots. Greece has seen protests as Europe has suffered from the debt crisis, which was also brought about by the great recession.”
I called the recession of 2008 and 2009 the great recession, but it appears we are headed into a greater recession. Many of those countries I mentioned in that article are Middle East countries. Will we see economic destruction of the economies of Middle East countries and Russia because of increased debt and the low price of oil? Economic turmoil often leads to war. I believe war is coming!
All events are orchestrated by God. In the end he will be glorified. If we are truly Christians, we are under his lordship and his care. He will take care of us through this time of unprecedented trouble for our Israel nations. We must obey our governments according to the third chapter of the book of Titus, but our ultimate governmental leader is Jesus Christ and he enjoins us to be faithful to God through all of this and to never give up the faith. (Luke 18:7-8).
Keep the faith and God bless all of you.
