HISTORICAL THEMES

• Biblical Plagues of Egypt: Exodus 7-11
• The Antonine Plague of the 2nd Century, described as similar to smallpox, may have killed as much as ten percent of the Roman population over a 23-year period in the late second century of 165 to 180 AD.
• The Bubonic Plague, or the Black Death was one of the first formally recorded and well documented pandemic. It was the deadliest pandemic recorded in human history. The Black Death pandemic resulted in the deaths of up to 75–200 million people worldwide.
• Spanish flu from February 1918 to April 1920, it infected 500 million people – about a third of the world’s population at the time – in four successive waves.

BIBLICAL INFERENCES

• God asked us to exercise our dominion over the earth. Genesis 1:28
• God has given us talents and gifts to fulfil His purpose and bless others.  1st Peter 4:10.
• God is working in us, giving us the desire and power to do what pleases him, Philippians 2:13.

I believe scientific  intervention done to relieve suffering and save human lives will be pleasing to God.

ETHICAL INFERENCES

• No advanced scientific intervention to combat previous pandemics
• Herd Immunity is resistance to the spread of an infectious disease within a population that is based on pre-existing immunity of a high proportion of individuals as a result of previous infection or vaccination.
• Natural (Unethical in a Pandemic, needless suffering and dying ) versus Created Herd Immunity achievable with vaccines.
• Not entirely new technology, recently trialled for cancer. Other Vaccines started with a generation and we all benefitted.

BASIS FOR RAPID PRODUCTION

• Common worldwide need.
• Abundant financial resources.
• Availability of ill people to meet the research and trial numbers.
• Due to the urgency of the threat processes and stages happened concurrently.
• The usual medical, regulatory, legal and quality checks were done but with the speed needed to meet up to the urgency of a global scourge.