Why does the good God allow COVID-19?

Common Dreams' assessment (2 April 2020) had nothing to do with God: 'The coronavirus may not, in retrospect, prove to be the tipping point that upends human civilization as we know it, but it should serve as a warning that we will experience ever more such events in the future as the world heats up…. In so many ways like these, Mother Nature strikes back when her vital organs suffer harm'.

With the Ebola virus, it is known that villagers became infected when 'a number who had carried, skinned, chopped or eaten a chimpanzee from the nearby forest'.

Channel 9's '60 Minutes' programme reported in March 2020: '"This is Mother Nature's revenge": Coronavirus expert calls for shut down of Asia's wildlife markets…. The Coronavirus is believed to have originated at a wildlife market in China's Wuhan city' and 'it is suspected that the virus crossed to humans from the pangolin'.

What is Mother Nature? It is a personification 'used for referring to nature and natural forces' (Macmillan Dictionary 2020. s.v. Mother Nature). This is how the meaning of Mother Nature is skewed, with an example from the Macmillan Dictionary: 'We hope Mother Nature will save the crops by bringing rain'. This is an example of mistaken identity for God the Father who sends the rain (see Matthew 5:45). The invented Mother Nature has not a skerrick of power to create rain or send the sun.

The stupidity of human beings

It started with the defiance of the first human beings. We know God sends judgments on people and nations for disobedience to his commands. We've seen it through Noah's flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. That's not where it will end. God has set a day when all people will be judged by Jesus: 'He will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead'.

'Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, SARS-CoV-2, and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife, as have so many other emerging pathogens' (ABC News, Brisbane, Qld, 18 April 2020). Would this virus have originated without contact through 'wet markets'?

This folly is seen in how human beings transmit HIV/AIDS. It is spread through certain body fluids of an infected person. Mostly it is from sexual behaviours and sharing injection needles. However, it can also be proliferated through 'blood, semen, pre-seminal fluids, rectal fluids, vaginal fluids and breast milk'.

Research by Deo et.al. (2009) confirmed the hypothesis that human beings who cleared the land of native vegetation had a 'significant effect on climate extremes including the duration and severity of droughts in eastern Australia'. Could we call this an example of raping the land and experiencing the cost?

Don't expect transparency from a Communist government.

At the beginning of January 2020, the mayor of Wuhan admitted there was a lack of action but when 100 cases had been confirmed by 23 January, 'city-wide restrictions were enacted'. About that time a whistleblower, Dr Li Wenliang warned colleagues of a Sars-like virus. He was silenced by the authorities and later died of COVID-19.

The Lancet medical journal reported Dr Li's message was 'meant to be a private message, he encouraged them to protect themselves from infection. Days later, he was summoned to the Public Security Bureau in Wuhan and made to sign a statement in which he was accused of making false statements that disturbed the public order'.

BBC News reported on 17 April 2020 that the 'China outbreak city Wuhan raises death toll by 50%'. On 27 March 2020, Radio Free Asia estimates the death toll in Wuhan is much higher than 2,500. 'The city's seven crematoriums should have a capacity of around 2,000 bodies a day if they worked around the clock'.

This isn't the first time the Communists misrepresented the facts. Remember the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989; the persecution of the Muslim Uighurs in western China, and Hong Kong's core freedoms to continue after the British handing over of the colony in 1997?