Tag Archives: Coronavirus
The End of Covid?
The conspiracy theorists have had a field day with covid. These manipulators who enjoy intimidating the weak and making the naïve believe their nonsense have put out some very weird ideas. These included that China wanted to take over the world, that somehow 5G mobile phone masts were responsible for the flu or that Bill Gates was intending to put a chip into every anti-flu vaccine and inject it into everyone in the world. Thanks to the sheer incompetence of governments worldwide, some actually believed such nonsense.
Let us look at some facts:
– 85% of victims of this virus were aged over 65; 1% were aged under 40; the number under the age of 20 was virtually 0. (This is completely unlike ‘Spanish’ (= American) flu which affected above all the young. Incidentally, tens of millions of victims of this American flu caught it only because of the British-organised, so-called ‘Russian Revolution’. Only because of this did the USA enter World War I, so at once bringing infected US troops into Europe to spread their flu).
– 96% of all victims of all ages had serious underlying health conditions – the others had immunological problems.
– Those over the age of 90 who caught it had an 85% chance of recovery.
– According to official statistics, the number of victims is now greater than in the swine flu virus a decade ago, though then there was no lockdown or economic catastrophe.
– Hysteria has been created by an irresponsible and sensation-seeking media, which talk of second and third waves. In reality, most of the new cases and ‘spikes’ are due to the existence of testing, which is picking up what before was not detected. In one recent case, it was said that infections had increased in one city by 100%; in reality the number of cases detected had indeed gone up – from 6 to 12.
Most of those who died from the covid virus would have died anyway; it is expected that there will now be a sharp fall in the death rate in months to come, as this flu has brought many who would have died in any case to a slightly premature death. Thus, in the UK the number of victims, equivalent to a thirteenth month of deaths for 2020, may simply mean that in the second half of 2020, there will be some 50,000 fewer deaths than would otherwise be expected. In other words, the death-rate for 2020 may well end up being comparable to other years.
The two problems that create conspiracy theorists is, firstly, that they believe that governments are sufficiently intelligent to create conspiracies and, secondly, that they do not believe in God. The second problem means that they do not know that although man proposes, God disposes. In fact, incompetence (including even the inability even to record accurately the number of deaths), panic and political correctness are the only explanations for governments, of left or right, bankrupting their economies and carrying out absurd lockdowns, threatening and intimidating the naïve, as if covid were the bubonic plague. The absurdity of closing schools, creating lasting psychological damage to a generation of schoolchildren, bankrupting millions of businesses and whole sectors of the economy, creating poverty and mass unemployment, especially among the young, is something that will never be forgotten. The remedy, which is in any case not a remedy, is indeed far worse than the problem.
Why such incompetence, panic and political correctness which have killed the economy and messed up hundreds of millions of lives? Only because people have lost faith in God, meaning that, as humanists, they cannot cope with the only inevitable fact in human existence – that we are all going to die, whether from covid, or, far more likely, from any of a thousand other causes.
The Church and the Holy Spirit
Quench not the Spirit.
1 Thess. 5, 19
When the Son of Man comes, shall He find faith on the earth?
Lk 18, 8
It seems strange that we should talk about the Church and the Holy Spirit, as if they were in some way contradictory. Surely the Church is the Body of Christ which radiates the Holy Spirit? Sadly, sometimes this is not the case, though only when we talk of the Church in the sense of the Church authorities. There is such a thing as the persecution of the faithful by Church authorities and this has been seen very many times in Church history.
This always happens whenever the Church authorities (not the Church) have allied themselves with the rich and mighty of this world, seeing the Church only as an opportunity for power and a well-paid career and church buildings as mere real estate, and not seeing the Church as the Body of Christ and suffering human souls who seek the Revelation of God.
Of course, this does not excuse the sectarian counter-reactions to them which often occur at the grassroots, at the present time in the form of old calendarist groups, which repeat the errors of Donatism of long ago. We have quite recently seen these phenomena even in the question of mask wearing.
Thus, just like atheists, the careerist, modernistic, liberal-inclined and secular-minded Church establishment, those who want and are the institutionalisation of the Church, are for masks. Seeing the Church as a mere corporate organisation, an anti-missionary business, they are also for many almost blasphemous practices which appear to deny the holiness of the sacraments. Some of them clearly think that the Body and Blood of Christ are merely bread and wine, just like those others who long ago lapsed from the Church, the Protestants and increasing numbers of Roman Catholics. Like secular people who so weakly believe, they fear death.
On the other hand, there are those whose faith is blind, having zeal not according to reason, and who behave irresponsibly. They would take no precautions whatsoever, sure that you can catch nothing from other people inside a church building. This is clearly a mistake. If there were an outbreak of cholera or the plague, they would not frequent other people, including inside the church building. Just because Covid-19 is less serious, it does not mean that we should not avoid it. We do not fear death, but this does not mean that we seek death.
We Orthodox, in the mainstream between the persecuting extremes, keep our churches open as far as State persecution, widespread now, allows us. We take reasonable precautions in obedience, but we do not avoid God’s Will, knowing that all is in His hands. In the past we have seen off perverts, freemasons, slanderers. We are not frightened of a new wave of persecution by the jealous. We shall stand up to the new persecution, wherever it comes from, left or right, with three unconquerable weapons:
The prayers of the Old Saints of Europe, the Saints of the First Millennium.
The prayers of the New Saints of Europe, the New Martyrs and Confessors.
The prayers of the Imperial Martyrs, the Royal and Holy Family of Europe.
Nobody, however jealous, rapacious and cunning they are, can take these away from us.
The Consequences of Coronavirus
Many changes, including temporary mass unemployment and the mass bankruptcy of many businesses, due to the lockdown imposed by governments in the name of coronavirus are hastening the end of a number of traditional practices.
Firstly, the trend to buying online, which means the end of the Victorian-invented High Street, has been accelerated.
Secondly, the end of the use of cash and its replacement by plastic cards, has been accelerated. This is as is prophesied in the Book of Revelation.
Thirdly, deChristianisation has been accelerated in Western and Westernised (for example, Greece), countries. Thus, many Catholic/ Protestant churches in particular, already in existential crisis and dying out through the complete loss of faith and which were closed down almost with zeal by atheist clergy even before they had to, will now go bankrupt and close.
Fourthly, the manipulators who thought that they could try and turn the people into zombies, blindly obeying any State propaganda, and that the whole coronavirus lockdown would serve as preparation for the foundation of a World Government, controlled by them, the billionaire elite, have been disappointed by their attempts.
Their disappointment comes as a result of the frustration of the poor underclass after three months of lockdown. The injustice that they have experienced during this time has sparked off the powder-keg of accumulated historical injustices and led to violent rioting and looting in the USA. This has spread to a lesser degree to Western Europe.
In Britain too there have been demonstrations. In the city of Bristol, this turned into an unlawful act. For some this was disgraceful. However, this unlawful act simply overturned a national disgrace: the statue of a slave-trader (he had the same profession as an ancestor of the former Prime Minister Cameron) was removed and thrown into the river. Some people found this unacceptable. Would they also have objected if the demonstrators had toppled and ‘desecrated’ a statue of Hitler?
The fact is that this country is full of statues of mass-murderers, like that of the Norman William the Bastard, who founded the whole concept of Britain and the Establishment, or that of the appalling Henry VIII. Then there is the statue of Cromwell outside Parliament in London. (He massacred up to one million people with 17th century technology). London and other cities are littered with statues of the wretched suicide and mass-murderer Clive (of India) and various Victorian military men and criminals like Rhodes. Then there is the honour given to Kitchener, the murderer of 70,000 South Africans for the sake of the British imperial lust for gold and diamonds. More recently, they have erected a statue of ‘Bomber’ Harris, ultimately responsible for 500,000 civilian deaths in Germany.
All these monsters are honoured by having dozens of streets, squares and schools named after them, in almost every British town and city. Many books consider them as national heroes.
Here there is no difference with post-Soviet Russia, where Bolshevik monsters are still honoured by statues and place-names.
We have always called for the de-Sovietisation and ‘re-Nationing’ of Russia. We also call for the de-Britainisation and ‘re-Nationing’ of the oppressed peoples of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who are conscious of our pre-Norman past. An oppressed minority, we too cannot breathe.
Conspiracy theorists see in the coronavirus crisis only negative phenomena. They are always wrong because they think only in human categories. They are apocalyptic pessimists because they exclude God from their theories. They do not know that although man may indeed propose, it is God Who disposes. God can always make good from bad. Is the long-awaited cultural liberation of this country at last beginning?
The Day of the Holy Spirit, 2020