The Amish response to coronavirus may have contributed to higher death rates from COVID-19 among their communities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Indiana

It appears that the Amish response to coronavirus, which was to resume life as normal after lockdowns in 2020 and among other things share the common cup at Holy Communion at church, may have contributed to higher death rates from COVID-19 in their communities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Indiana. 

Death rates per 100k of population currently exceed overall state rates in 17 Amish counties out of 30 top Amish counties which together form the 10 largest Amish communities in the nation.

The data is from The New York Times at us-covid-tracker.com, pandemic to date as of Oct 11, 2021.

Ohio (197 deaths/100k):

Holmes, putatively the most Amish county in the nation, 273 deaths/100k, which is 38.6% higher than the current overall Ohio rate of 197/100k.

Wayne 224

Coshocton 216

Tuscarawas 316

Stark 279

Trumbull 273

Ashtabula 200

Mercer 224.

 

Indiana (239 deaths/100k):

 

Elkhart 251

Jay 240

Wells 311

Marshall 296

Daviess 342.

 

Illinois (221 deaths/100k):

Moultrie 283

Coles 241.

 

Pennsylvania (235 deaths/100k):

 

Mifflin 403

Huntingdon 332.

 

For 5 Amish counties in Pennsylvania, the current average death rate exceeds the state rate to date by 14%. For 10 Amish counties in Ohio the average death rate exceeds the state rate by 18%. For 3 Amish counties in Illinois the average death rate exceeds the state rate by 12%. And for 12 Amish counties in Indiana the average death rate exceeds the state rate, to date, by just over 1%. Two multi-county Amish communities within Indiana exceed the state death rate to date by an average of 9.2%. One of those Indiana Amish communities abuts Ohio's Mercer County whose death rate exceeds the Ohio death rate to date by 13.7% (included in the Ohio total above).

 

Since the data used here is cumulative, it was not possible to reconstruct the rates at previous points in the past. It is likely that the current rates represent the state of affairs long after the height of the damage was done by the pandemic.

 

More granular data showing specifically Amish deaths would be needed to verify that the deaths were contained within the Amish community. The Amish typically do not participate in government in general, or public education or public health care in particular.

America's Amish willingly got the coronavirus at church by taking the common cup at Holy Communion

After a short shutdown last year, the Amish chose a unique path that led to Covid-19 tearing through at warp speed. It began with an important religious holiday in May.

Lapp: When they take communion, they dump their wine into a cup and they take turns to drink out of that cup. So, you go the whole way down the line, and everybody drinks out of that cup, if one person has coronavirus, the rest of church is going to get coronavirus. The first time they went back to church, everybody got coronavirus.

Lapp says they weren’t denying coronavirus, they were facing it head on.

More.

The Old Order Amish have made simplicity a way of life in America since its inception, but today people shell out big bucks to flirt with it "on vacation"

Guess which one is the example of terrible simplification.

The Ultimate Luxury Vacation: Doing Nothing in the Middle of Nowhere:

Simplicity is the ultimate luxury as travelers search for new ways to unplug this summer. The promise of escaping everyday life has always lured vacationers. But now people whose daily routines are consumed by digital demands and distractions are going to ever-greater lengths to do nothing in the middle of nowhere.

The unintended consequences of religion: Liberal "political correctness" is to Puritanism as libertarian "going Galt" is to what?

Shunning:

Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord . . .. -- 2 Cor. 6:17

Peter Berger Misunderstands Interim Ethics

Peter Berger, writing in The American Interest, here:

The British writer Ferdinand Mount described the Sermon of the Mount as perhaps the greatest sermon ever, but that it was written for bachelors—that is, for individuals with no responsibility for the future. Probably Jesus’ message about the Kingdom of God was apocalyptic—a message about a radical shift in the nature of reality (which means that Paul was not far off). We know that many of his followers, and perhaps Jesus himself, expected that the apocalyptic event would happen in their own lifetime. Thus, as some scholars have put it, the moral teachings of Jesus (and possibly Paul’s as well) were an “interim ethic”—how to live in the short time before the coming of the Kingdom. If you expect the world to end next week, you won’t bother to change the oil, though you still want the windshield wipers to work. In that interpretation, the Sermon on the Mount was meant to describe the world after the coming of the Kingdom (though some of Jesus’ followers may want to anticipate this blessed condition in their present lives). Be this as it may, it is very doubtful indeed that Jesus intended these teachings to be a behavioral code for the next two millennia. In any case, any society larger than an Amish village would not survive for very long if it tried to live by such a code.

This is good as far as it goes, and God knows we don't read enough people talking about these issues, but it does seem to miss two things.

One, the Sermon on the Mount isn't just for bachelors. It's also for spinsters.

Apocalyptic ethics overthrow all human conventions because true repentance is impossible without them. There are no more husbands, fathers, wives, mothers and children per se in the kingdom of God, which is coming suddenly with the appearance of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven. There is no time for funerals, for working at a job, for building bigger barns in your retirement to hold all your increase. "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother" (Mk.3:34f.).

Two, the world after the coming of the kingdom is not really describable because it is transformed by divine action.

What is remarkable about it is how few, however, take seriously what this means in terms of justice in the teaching of Jesus. The assumption is usually that there are many human players left in a too-worldly kingdom of God populated by shiny happy people who have received the grace of God, whereas Jesus is at pains to describe God's coming judgment in which evil and evil-doers are swept away. The angels first come at the harvest not to rapture the few into the air to ever be with the Lord, but to gather the many tares and hurl them into the fire. As interim ethics, Jesus' teaching is survival ethics, and temporary because terrestrial, designed to help his hearers escape the wrath that is coming. Beyond that, the future is not really ours to see.

Perhaps more than anything else, it is the failure of this vision to materialize historically which has been lurking in the background in the mind of modernity and fueling the conviction that God is dead.