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Finding a Scapegoat
And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. (Matthew 12:24)
I read an article in the LA Times op-ed section written by an emergency room doctor. The headline was “I am running out of compassion for the unvaccinated. Get the shot.” I am not going to discuss the pros and cons of getting the COVID-19 shot. I am going to comment on our reactions toward each other regarding this shot and this virus in general.
I acknowledge that this emergency room doctor was speaking out of fatigue and frustration. In fact, most of us are speaking out of fatigue and frustration regarding almost everything that has been going on in our country and in the world over the last year and a half. If you mix in a healthy dose of fear, we have the makings for the destruction of many of our personal relationships.
As human beings, we have a natural instinct to find a scapegoat for all of our problems– someone to blame– someone to cast all of our sin and guilt upon. The Bible has its own scapegoat story
The book of Leviticus describes a bizarre ritual requiring two goats that was performed by the High Priest of Israel on the High Holy day of Yom Kipper– The Day of Atonement. (Chapter 16)
7 And he shall take the two goats, and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.8 And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat.
21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live (scape)goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat,..
The scapegoat was then sent out into the wilderness, presumably to meet its death. Tradition says that often a man was sent to make sure the goat met its death quickly rather than take the chance that it would wander back into the camp complete with all the sins of Israel on its head. Of course, for Christian believers, the symbolism of the scapegoat points perfectly to Christ, the one who “takes away the sins of the world.”
While the scapegoat account is thought-provoking, it is also comforting that there is someone who will take the blame for all that is wrong with the world. Our problem today though is that we are all trying to assign blame for this COVID virus on convenient scapegoats– often assigning scapegoat status to family and friends who make different health and medical decisions than we do.
In doing so we have stepped way outside our realm of responsibility. The casting of lots to determine which goat served as the scapegoat was understood to be a way of determining God’s will– nobody else’s. We do not have all the answers, and we should not act as though we do. Maybe in years to come, we might start to sort it all out. But now we are mostly blind men groping around in the dark.
I’m not saying that there isn’t someone to blame for the ravages of this virus or even some very dark agenda behind it; I’m just saying that this dark agenda probably does not involve your friends or family members.
Let’s hope that this doctor in this article has not lost his compassion to treat all those whose lifestyle choices may or may not cause them to end up in his emergency room or doctor’s office. There has never been a one-size-fits-all approach for health decisions that works any better than a one-size-fits-all garment — it only looks good on a tiny fraction of people.
Assigning scapegoat status to any group of people has never turned out well. Consider the Jews of Germany in the 1940s. Let’s not lose our compassion for those who make different choices than we do. Let’s not assign evil motives, lack of intelligence, or Zombie-like adherence to political agendas. We are each doing the best we have with what we’ve got.
Our own personal compassion and humanity are all that we can control right now.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Then there are these guys:
https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-doctors-walkout-unvaccinated-patients-surge-2021-8
I don’t care how long the walkout lasted. Leaving your post (and not treating patients in the process) for political reasons is unprofessional behavior, IMHO. What do our Ricochetti MDs think?
One of my friends, who both had the poke and a breakthru case of covid, likes to tell Vax Karens (those people who scream at you to get vaccinated) “don’t worry about people who haven’t gotten the vax, God will vaccinate them” Which infuriates them more. His point, is simply, those who don’t get the poke will eventually develop their own antibodies by getting the vid. After all, isn’t that what true herd immunity is about?
Poke and the Vid. Sounds like a puppet show. Next The Coof — a new dance craze, like the electric slide with 6-foot distancing (which is good with the electric slide).
But seriously, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
You’re telling my story, Kathy! I want everyone to decide for themselves about the vaccine, even if our hospitals fill up. No vaccine tyranny! And I and my family are vaccinated and looking to get the booster.
But, I think everyone will get this thing, one way or another. I’m just hoping the vaccine keeps my family out of the hospital. We’ve done our time there.
As to the scapegoat, that’s all the Left has, since their arguments are either false or incoherent. They’re constantly scapegoating. Pick your Republican president as Hitler. Donald Trump was just the latest. Dysfunction and incarceration among blacks is the fault of white (conservative, Christian) racists. The planet is dying from climate change because you drive an SUV!! The list is endless.
It amazes me how everyone ignores natural immunity acquired by actually having had the virus-as if it doesn’t count.
“Lawlessness” of some —lying, deception, greed— has caused so many to turn on each other. I see it in all the major news of the day.
Yes, I would like know what others in the medical profession think of this. I think these people need to choose a new profession.
Great points!
Our own humanity and compassion IS all we can control–we better control it well.
As Yoda says:
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.:
The Bible has a slightly different take:
From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
I would start with the fact that this basically did not happen. The article itself states that all the physicians that took part were off duty.
“WPTV reported that about 75 doctors — from numerous hospitals and offices — took part in the the protest. A spokesperson for the group told Insider that all of the doctors were off duty. “
Here is the AP fact checker who actually spoke to the doctors. No patients suffered any denial of care or even delay of care because of this event.
https://apnews.com/article/health-florida-coronavirus-pandemic-ap-fact-check-e06996588279b9f1e9cfe2b99536ab56
It was not organized as a walkout or protest but as a news conference to push for vaccination.
Never for a moment forget that the type of doctor who would do this protest walkout are the same type of individuals who failed to carefully subject the Fauci-ordered ban on actual remedies for COVID to a smell test.
And that failure is the whole entire reason we are in this mess.
COVID fatalities would have been 83 to 86% lower had HCQ protocols or ivermectin with zinc, or high dose C and D remedies been employed.
I might suggest that they shift to store-to-door food delivery. Or yard care.
“Dozens of South Florida doctors staged a symbolic walkout of a hospital in Palm Beach Gardens on Monday to protest a surge in unvaccinated COVID-19 patients, according to local reports.” Nobody abandoned their patients. But I’m ready to pull the plug and retire. Can’t keep doing this for much longer.
We are exhausted. Our volumes are twice what they normally are over 80 patients a day. day after day after day. The hospitals are again crowded in some areas, like my local hospital, staff is burned out. So yeah, empathy for people who refuse to listen to our advice is thin on the ground.
Little personal story. My son in law has a friend in his late 30’s that got Covid. Got pretty sick, high fevers, extreme fatigue shortness of breath, unvaccinated. He caught covid from his uncle who knew he had covid, but went to a family event anyway because he “didn’t believe in it.” The uncle ended up dying. His brother is in the ICU intubated. Their mother is hospitalized but not in the ICU.
When we see things like this ( or the fact that our local NICU has 2 babies delivered of mothers who had covid and needed emergency C sections, one of which died, the other on life support) we save what empathy we have for those who are doing everything they can to make the situation better.
As a resident of LA county who has been vaccinated I wonder if that doctor thinks vaccinated people should still be forced to wear a mask, as has been recently decreed.
Did he receive medically prescribed prophylactic treatment, early medical diagnosis, and medically prescribed ambulatory care, according to accepted protocols?
If not, then his case isn’t relevant to the question, “what is ethical medical treatment?”
Kozac, it is as if you were saying, “my uncle died of syphilis, therefore antibiotics are ineffective against syphilis” when your uncle didn’t get antibiotics.
If your uncle got the best known medical treatment (which untested, novel gene therapy is NOT) then it’s a single anecdote against reliance on ethical treatment. Not conclusive, at all, though! Some people just get sick and die of a virulent upper respiratory virus, regardless of whether they are properly treated.
SARS COVID-2 is an extremely virulent bug which, partially due to artificially magnified pressure to evolve into new variants from mass vaccinations, is doing just that. You can’t prevent it from spreading. You have to learn to live with it. You have to rely on basic proven principles of research and treatment. You can’t use it as an excuse for a totalitarian government to conduct experiments for its own amusement on its citizens–its chattel.
Perhaps I’m not seeing the connection. Are you saying the doctor is scapegoating the unvaccinated? I don’t see his statement as scapegoating. I’m reading it as not understanding the reasoning of the stubborn resistors. He doesn’t feel compassion any longer because the wound is self inflicted, similar to a drug addict taking drugs. At some point it’s their free choice. Though I will always have compassion one can only reply they were told and refused.
Every known variant of Covid, including the Delta, variant existed before the vaccine.
I’ve never gotten a damn bit of empathy from a doctor. I’ve witnessed my sons get some during their myriad of sports injuries.
I don’t want or expect “empathy” from a doctor. So them claiming they don’t have any inspires the question: so what?
I do expect doctors to do their job. Just like I expect of everyone.
One of the last arguments I had with my mother was when Obamacare went through. I told her: my two best friends are morbidly obese. Because of that they require a lot of healthcare. And I won’t want that to be a concern of mine, because it’s not my business.
These past years have turned me into the person I didn’t want to be. When I hear about someone passing from Covid my first thought is not sympathy. It’s : what their weight ?
Sorry for your experience. One effect of COVID is we’re going to have a massive shortage of doctors, making it more likely that, um, less qualified candidates will be accepted into med school. God help us.
Right. It doesn’t create pressure to generate mutations, but pressure for those variants to increase in the population.
The rank-and-file of the medical profession are already less qualified and frequently less motivated. There are exceptions, of course.
If they stopped working for political reasons, they abandoned their patients. If they didn’t, then this isn’t news at all . . .