Immunised

COVID has decided to revisit our house. So far, once again it’s only me who is showing symptoms and testing positive.  This time round it feels like something between a heavy cold and light flu.  Hopefully that’s as bad as it will get.

It seems that whist Omicron has proved more virulent in terms of its ability to transmit and infection many more people, our experience of this variant has been much less severe.  Many more people have tested positive but this means that the high hospital numbers in December and just before Easter represented a smaller proportion of the total cases. What is more, far fewer people have ended up on mechanical ventilation in ICU. COVID is still serious, but it isn’t quite the threat it was.

However, I understand that virologists don’t think that this is because the particular strain is any less deadly. In terms of the potential affect, it remains as serious as before and that’s why we are still seeing people dying.  Rather, what has happened is that through a serious of vaccinations and in many cases repeat exposure to the virus (this is at least my second dose of it), our immunity is building up.  It isn’t a novel and surprising thing to us. Our immune systems are better prepared and able to respond.

This reminded me of an old quote. I think it was attributed to Billy Graham.

“The problem is that many people have been exposed to just enough religion to inoculate them against the real thing.”

In other words, if people experience a form of Christianity that gives them a spiritual experience and teaches them some basic moral rules then they become used to that and so more resistant to the true Gospel.

The challenge for us when we invite people to church is whether they are getting the real thing or are being inoculated by a neutered/watered down alternative.