Death in the Time of Plague

“Last night the wife said,

Oh, boy, when you’re dead,

You won’t take nothing with you but your soul—

THINK.”

~ The Beatles, “The Ballad of John and Yoko”

It is clear to me by this point in the pandemic that what, collectively, we most fear as a society is death. This is understandable, of course. But we don’t seem to fear economic ruin, loneliness, or existential despair with the same intensity.

I think part of the reason is that, in a post-Christian, post-religious world, we are not really ...