Osler's Razor

A time of pandemic is a pretty good time to revisit the Book of Joel (and my Sunday School class has been doing exactly that). It doesn't get much attention-- it is buried in the minor prophets at the end of the New Testament-- but it is spot on for our time.

It's not clear when the events take place, but it involves an epic infestation of locusts. While our calamity is of germs, not insects, they are both small things that devastate.

This passage describes the way these things roll out: not as a single event, but a series of tragedies that are related to and build on one another.

What the cutting locust left,
    the swarming locust has eaten.
What the swarming locust left,
    the hopping locust has eaten,
and what the hopping locust left,
    the destroying locust has eaten.

Later we come to this, which the smarter people in my class explained. Apples would only have grown at a high elevation, or far away:

The vine withers,
    the fig tree droops.
Pomegranate, palm, and apple—
    all the trees of the field are dried up;
surely, joy withers away
    among the people.

Put them together, and you have the challenge we have faced: a plague that rolls out in stages, and spread out over the world.

And, as always, the Bible here advises humility, a virtue in too short supply.