The talking heads are right. In a pandemic, we conduct ourselves differently. We aren't only concerned about our grocery shopping and our lawn. We are aware that our public activities impact others. Unaware, we may carry the virus to the most vulnerable. It's not just your health at risk. It's that senior adult next door, or that 12-year old girl with diabetes who touches the same counter.
But they are only partly right. There's more to consider than the lifespan of the immune-compromised. We aren't simply to protect those whose physical health is at stake. Our actions in this pandemic also impact the mental health of millions of Americans.
We could greatly decrease the risk of dying from COVID if we were on complete lockdown. Get our groceries delivered to our homes by people with gloves and masks and never leave our bedroom. After all, isn't "a human life worth that kind of personal sacrifice?" But there is more to consider than living a life free from the danger of Corona.
I'm not an authority on mental health. I'm just a pastor in a Midwestern city of 3-plus million. But in the last three weeks of this shelter-in-place order, two distant male friends from the St. Louis area have committed suicide. That's certainly not a trend. But it's made me think.
It's ironic. The price we are paying for physical health through social distancing is putting something else at risk: mental and emotional health. “Social isolation protects us from a contagious, life-threatening virus, but at the same time it puts people at risk for things that are the biggest killers in the United States: suicide, overdose and diseases related to alcohol abuse," says Jeffrey Reynolds, the president of a non-profit social services agency based in Long Island, NY.
I'm all for doing what we can to protect the physically vulnerable. But let's not forget the emotional well-being of humans. We aren't simply vascular systems and muscled-skeletons. We are souls with emotions. At some point, we need to open our doors and our arms again. To do more than virtual chats in virtual rooms. We need to sit together on sofas and at picnic tables, around bonfires and in kitchens. We need to sing together, squeeze a shoulder and look a recovering addict in the eye. As the wise man Solomon said, "For everything there is a season...there is a time to embrace and there is a time refrain from embracing." (Eccl 3:1,5)
We are moving swiftly toward a time when we must embrace each other again. After all, how much is a human life worth?
