JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The novel coronavirus disease we’re battling is on track to become the deadliest pandemic this nation has seen in 100 years.
The nation’s top infectious disease expert and member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said Sunday that based on models, the United States could eventually see 100,000 or more deaths from the novel coronavirus.
“I don’t want to be held to that,” Fauci said, but he did add that the US is going to face “millions of cases.”
How does that compare to other pandemics?
Swine flu
The nation’s most recent fight was in 2009 when the H1N1 virus, also called swine flu, appeared in the U.S. and spread quickly across the world. This H1N1 virus contained a unique combination of influenza genes not previously identified in animals or people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to the CDC from April 2009 to April 2010 there were about 60.8 million cases of the swine flu with 12,469 deaths in the United States.
Unlike COVID-19, swine flu targeted the younger population, who health officials said had little to no existing immunity. Nearly one-third of people over 60 had antibodies against the virus, making CDC experts believe these people were likely exposed to an older version of the virus earlier in their lives.
Since the swine flu was very different from seasonal influenza, vaccination with flu vaccines offered little protection. After the peak of illness in the U.S., a vaccine to this strain of H1N1 was produced. According to the CDC, people are still infected with, hospitalized and die from the swine flu.
SARS
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, which spread around the globe in 2003, was a respiratory illness caused by a coronavirus similar to COVID-19. First reported in Asia, SARS spread to more than 20 countries.
According to the World Health Organization, 8,098 people worldwide became sick with SARS during and 774 people died. The CDC said only eight patients in the U.S. had laboratory-confirmed as SARS cases and there were no SARS-related deaths in this country.
Much like how COVID-19 has spread, the first people in the U.S. impacted by SARS had traveled to other parts of the world where the infection was spreading.
Asian flu
From 1956-1958, an outbreak of Influenza A would travel from China to the U.S., killing 2 million people worldwide according to the WHO. Its impact on East Asia dubbed this strain the Asian flu.
In its two-year spree, the H2N2 sub-type killed about 69,800 people in the U.S.
This flu varied in symptoms from a minor cough and a slight fever to pneumonia. Those unaffected by this type of the flu were believed to have protective antibodies to other closely related strains of influenza.
The death rate was curbed by the quick development of a vaccine and the availability of antibiotics to treat secondary infections.
Spanish flu
The 1918 flu pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history, according to the CDC.
The illness, dubbed the Spanish flu, rapidly spread worldwide from 1918-1919, infecting nearly a third of the global population. Health records show it killed an estimated 50 million people around the world with an estimated 675,000 of those deaths in the United States.
Because of the lack of public health record-keeping at the time, there are no firm numbers of the lives it took in Florida, but University of South Florida historian Gary Mormino said nearly one-third of Jacksonville’s residents -- estimated about 90,000 people at the time -- contracted the flu. It was reported that 400 people died in Jacksonville in just one month: October 1918.
The death rate was for healthy people in the 20-40 year age group was unusual during the 1918 influenza pandemic.
There were no vaccines or antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections associated with the flu.
Public health control efforts resorted to isolation, quarantine, personal hygiene and limitations of public gatherings -- much like how medical leaders are advising to handle the coronavirus. Like during the current COVID-19 pandemic, these public health control efforts were applied unevenly across the globe.
To this date, there is no consensus about where the virus originated.
The Plague
Is this not surely God’s visitation on a world gone so terribly wrong?
As each newscast has brought more vivid and alarming accounts of the advance of the coronavirus, complete with mounting statistics and ghastly human suffering and loss, the fear of another pandemic grips the heart. Disquieting news arrives hourly of the effort to prevent the spread of this disease to every reach of the world.
Just recently, bringing the threat more symbolically closer to home, the Adventist Review reported the first death of an Adventist from the coronavirus in China, the ground zero of this plague, and the infection of at least five other church members there. By the time of this reading, there will almost certainly be further such reports.
It isn’t as if fears of such a global threat come out of nowhere. As anyone who has even the most casual memory of history knows, almost exactly a century ago the flu epidemic of 1918 “swept the world in 1918 [and] killed an estimated 50 million people. One fifth of the world’s population was attacked by this deadly virus. Within months, it had killed more people than any other illness in recorded history.”
Today’s growing menace of the coronavirus raises a kind of fear among humanity that has, in fact, recurred throughout history. Students of literature cannot escape awareness of the almost grim fascination with which authors have drawn on pestilence in history. In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe (who else?) recounts a fictional story of an attempt by a wealthy nobility to quarantine itself in a masquerade in an abbey, only to be infected, room by room by an uninvited guest disguised as a victim of the Red Death.
Elsewhere in literature, reading a great deal like unsettling news reports heard in today’s media, Samuel Pepys’ diary entries for several years in the mid-1660s—and this is no fictional writing—include observations of “great talke of the Dutch preparing of sixty sayle of ships. The plague grows mightily among them, both at sea and land.”
Albert Camus came to international prominence with the publication of his novel La Peste (The Plague) in 1947, in which an epidemic of bubonic plague in Oran, Algeria, provides the bleak setting for his commentary on society. When the entire city has been placed under strict quarantine, each gate guarded rigidly to prevent any ingress or egress, Camus describes a soul-searing Sunday morning sermon by a Catholic priest in a service that has attracted a noticeably larger attendance than usual: “‘The first time this scourge appears in history,’ the priest intoned, ‘it was wielded to strike down the enemies of God. Pharaoh set himself up against the divine will, and the plague beat him to his knees. Thus from the dawn of recorded history the scourge of God has humbled the proud of heart and laid low those who hardened themselves against Him. Ponder this well, my friends, and fall on your knees. . . . No earthly power, nay, not even, mark me well, the vaunted might of human science can avail you to avert that hand once it is stretched toward you. And winnowed like corn on the blood-stained threshing-floor of suffering, you will be cast away with the chaff.’”
Can anyone with any awareness of the pestilences of Egypt in the Old Testament, and its ten plagues, not be struck with the idea of impending judgment? The Nile River, the very source of life and health to the Egyptians, curdled into blood. Then a succession of three disturbing waves of infestation—frogs, lice, and flies. Followed by an epidemic striking domestic animals—cattle, horses, donkeys, sheep, goats, camels. Then the mass infliction of boils on all animals, including humans themselves. Yet another wave of insects, this time crop-destroying locusts. Three days of darkness, blotting out the sun itself, the very god of the Egyptians. Throughout all this, Pharaoh refused to bow, to give in to unmistakable power.
Through all this, the utter fear of the Egyptian people surely grew itself like a plague. Powerless against the obstinate stubbornness of the leader of their people, they were yet to endure one last dreadful night. As the sun went down that evening, cries echoed through the night, in which every firstborn—child and adult—including the firstborn son of the Pharaoh himself, was lost.
The heart-stopping message of Camus’ priest in Oran, Algeria, may well arise in the mind today as hourly media reports come of the global scientific effort to contain the coronavirus, to quarantine the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of this frightful threat to humankind—to prevent the virus’s appearance in other countries around the planet. There are, after all, those seven plagues predicted in the biblical book of Revelation. Is this not surely God’s visitation on a world gone so terribly wrong?
Most of the rest of the world, hearing of the potential peril—of algorithmic predictions of just how cataclysmic this could be—nervously dismiss it and try not to think about it. Others shrug their shoulders fatalistically. After all, that flu epidemic about a century ago affected only one out of five of the world’s population overall. There seems to be little thinking, however, that it’s all just fake news.
But the priest’s sermon still reminds that in moments like these, a great many come face to face with one of the greatest of existential questions in the human existence: What is the meaning of death? Is that all there is?
For the people of Israel back there in Egypt, under complete bondage at the pleasure of the Pharaoh, there was at least the promise—the hope—of deliverance from that last, fateful, tenth plague. The painting of blood on the doorposts was more than a scientific preventative act. There was also in it a public declaration of acceptance of the blood of a Savior as the only true hope beyond mortality itself.
The scientific response—the painting of the global doorpost—to the coronavirus must by all means be made. But the ultimate deliverance from the greater spiritual virus that has infected humankind for these several thousand years may also be received through the acceptance of blood, Christ’s blood 2,000 years ago.
The Ten Plagues of Egypt
The 10 Plagues of Egypt from the Book of Exodus is one of the most well known events from the Bible. Some people are familiar with the details of the plagues themselves, but not everyone understands their full impact on Egypt. The plagues not only decimated Egypt both physically and economically, but more importantly they decimated them spiritually. All the plagues targeted a specific one or combination of the Egyptian Gods or Goddesses.
The Bibles time line would place the plagues at about the 15th century B.C.
It is difficult to pinpoint exact time since the Bible does not give the specific name of the Pharaoh.
It took about 1 year for all the plagues to unfold. We learn this by studying the seasons of planting and harvesting crops in Egypt, Moses age when he first spoke to Pharaoh(Exodus 7:7)
Skeptics and Scientists have tried to explain these events as natural events that could have unfolded in Egypt. They cannot explain how Moses was able to give advanced warning to Egypt before some of them happened or how some affected only Egypt and not Israel.
Historians also point to there being no historical records of the plagues. If you were in charge of all the scribes in Egypt, would you want a record of your biggest defeat at the hands of a God you didn’t even believe in?
Why did God send the plagues?
The Bible says that the plagues were brought upon Egypt so that the Pharaoh would know “The Hebrew God”.
3 But I will cause Pharaoh to be stubborn so I can multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. 4 Even then Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you. So I will crush Egypt with a series of disasters, after which I will lead the forces of Israel out with great acts of judgment. 5 When I show the Egyptians my power and force them to let the Israelites go, they will realize that I am the Lord
God wanted to prove to Egypt who he was firsthand. He wanted to display his power so they would know him.
“Know” is the root word of “knowledge”
7 Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Only fools despise wisdom and discipline
Fear- filial (pertaining to becoming a son or daughter) regard mingled with awe; reverence
In essence, God wanted Egypt to come to know him as “The Father” just as he wants all of us to become sons and daughters of his. Just as a child looks at a parent with awe, God wanted Egypt and Israel to realize who he was.
Why 10 Plagues?
“10” in The Bible represents completion
Why didn’t God simply destroy Egypt to show his power?
Because of his mercy.
Lets now look at the 10 Plagues and who/what they affected.
There is a distinct progression in the plagues with the long term effect it would have on the land.
Some areas of Egypt had different names for the same God. Some Gods were responsible to more than 1 area of life. If you were to research these names you may find alternative names or more names of Gods that the plagues could have targeted.
Plague #1-Waters Become Blood Exodus 7:14-24
Pharaoh was warned in advance of this plague.
This plague targeted the Egyptian God Hapi who was the “God of The Nile” and was also know as the “Spirit of The Nile”. The Goddess Anqet who was a water goddess. The God Khnemu who was a water god and one of Egypts oldest known Gods.
All the waters(the river and stores of water) were affected
Pharaohs priests were able to duplicate this (the Bible does not say how except “secret arts”) but they were unable to reverse it.
This plague affected both Egypt and Israel.
Plague #2-Frogs Exodus 8:1-15
Pharaoh was warned in advance of this plague.
This targeted the god Heqt. She was a frog headed goddess and represented resurrection
Pharaohs priests were able to duplicate this but were unable to reverse it.
Pharaoh told Moses to have God take away the frogs and he would let the Israelites go.
Moses told Pharaoh to set the time for them to be gone. God took away the frogs at the appointed time(the next day) but Pharaoh changed his mind.
This plague affected both Egypt and Israel.
Plague #3-Lice or Gnats Exodus 8:16-19
This targeted the god Kheper who was the God of beetles and flies
Pharaoh’s priests tried but could not duplicate this. They told Pharaoh that this was “the finger of God”
This plague affected both Egypt and Israel.
The Israelites were probably growing angry at Moses at this time because they were suffering also.
Plague #4-Flies Exodus 8:20-32
This again targeted the god Kheper who was the God of beetles and flies
Pharaoh was warned in advance of this plague. This time, God did not allow Israel to be affected(verse 22). Pharaoh’s priest didn’t even try to duplicate this. Pharaoh told Moses he would let the Israelites go if Moses could get God to take away the flies. Moses did this but Pharaoh changed his mind.
Plague #5-Death of Livestock Exodus 9:1-7
This targeted the God Apis(Greek name) or Hap. This was a sacred bull to the Egyptians. When Apis was well it was considered the livestock was well. This plague affected horses, donkeys, camels, cattle and sheep. Not just cattle as usally thought. All these animals were essential to the lives of Egypt. Cattle especially were seen as a symbol of wealth. None of the Hebrew livestock were harmed. Pharaoh even sent men to investigate if the Hebrew livestock was harmed. Pharaoh’s priests could not duplicate this.
Plague #6-Boils Exodus 9:8-12
This targeted the gods Imhotep who was the physician God. He was also worshiped by the Romans and Greeks as the God of medicine. The priests could not even heal themselves. According to the Bible, this affected only the Egyptians and animals.
This targeted the Goddess Nut who was Goddess of the Sky. This affected every plant, tree, and living thing in Egypt. The Hebrews were not harmed. Even some of Pharoah’s officials heeded the warning and brought in thiere livestock. This would have wiped out most of Egypts crops. In verse 27 Pharoah admits that he has sinned against God. He asks Moses to have God stop the hail and he will let the Hebrews go. He again changed his mind.
Plague #8-Locust Exodus 10:1-20
This targeted the God Seth, who was God of Crops. Pharoah’s priests begged him to let the Hebrews go. The locust would have eaten whatever crops or vegatation was left. Pharaoh again admitted he was wrong, agreed to let the Hebrews go, and changed his mind after the locust left. Locust are devastating to any agriculture society. If you are a farmer, the worst thing you can see is locust invading your fields.
Plague #9-Darkness Exodus 10:21-29
This targeted many gods. Ra the most powerful of the sun gods. Horus who was another sun god. Khepera-rising sun god( meant “comes into being”), Atum-setting sun god(“complete one”). The sun was a vital part of everyday life in Egypt.
Pharoah wanted to let them go but changed his mind because the Hebrews would have taken their livestock with them. The livestock was needed not only to sustain life but also for worship. Israel had light but Egypt did not.
Plague #10-Firstborn Sons Die Exodus 11:1-12:30
This targeted the god Bes who was the “Protector of Children” also know as “Protector of The Family. It also affected the “Ka” or vital lifeforce of the Egyptians. Both Egypt and Israel were affected by this plague since the Bible mentions both “sons of Pharaoh” and “firstborn of the prisoner” as well as livestock (12:29). This was also a direct attack on Pharaoh himself. Egyptians believed all Pharoahs to be the living incarnation of their God.
7 Remove this wicked person from among you so that you can stay pure. Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us.
Some of the plagues that fell on Egypt will fall on the earth again in the end times when the angels pour out the vials of wrath.
Plague #6 The Boils/1st Vial of Wrath
2 So the first angel left the Temple and poured out his bowl over the earth, and horrible, malignant sores broke out on everyone who had the mark of the beast and who worshiped his statue.
Plague #1 Waters to Blood/3rd Vial of Wrath
4 Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs, and they became blood.
Plague #9 Darkness/5th Vial of Wrath
10 Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was plunged into darkness. And his subjects ground their teeth in anguish,
Plague #7 Hailstorm/7th Vial of Wrath
21 There was a terrible hailstorm, and hailstones weighing seventy-five pounds fell from the sky onto the people below. They cursed God because of the hailstorm, which was a very terrible plague.
The only way to escape witnessing the plagues then is to be covered by the blood of Jesus now and forever.