How do we answer unbelievers who ask Christians, why our loving God would (allow or send) this microscopic enemy to reek such devastating havoc on the world.
There's a lot of disagreement among professing Christians on, whether God sent this virus or whether it was manufactured in a lab and sent out to be used as a weapon of war. Or whether it's neither of those and it's just a random quirk of nature.
I'm not claiming to know the exact origin, but I do believe that God is sovereign over all of His creation. And nothing happens apart from His predetermined will.
So even if it was created by someone will evil intentions, God still uses evil to accomplish His good purpose. I found this very hard to accept, until I realized that I was trying to conform God to my own image.
I can't think of the Bible passages right now, which say that God has only revealed a very limited amount about Himself to us at this time. But He will reveal a lot more in eternity so as hard as it is, we just have to keep trusting in Him.
God is Holy first of all, and his holiness informs every other attribute including his love. The Bible tells God is sovereign over events in this world, nothing will ultimately thwart his purposes. He can use events like this to His glory, just as he used the death of Lazarus.
What matters is our soul and that we are rightly related to God through Jesus Christ.
I believe its not inconsistent for God to use a disease as an instrument of discipline or judgement and on the same time in Providence provide medical care also.
We are enjoined to pray for this time of sickness to end. The Book of Common prayer has this prayer also:
O ALMIGHTY God, who in thy wrath didst send a plague upon thine own people in the wilderness, for their obstinate rebellion against Moses and Aaron; and also, in the time of king David, didst slay with the plague of pestilence threescore and ten thousand, and yet, remembering thy mercy, didst save the rest: Have pity upon us miserable sinners, who now are visited with great sickness and mortality; that, like as thou didst then accept of an atonement, and didst command the destroying angel to cease from punishing, so it may now please thee to withdraw from us this plague and grievous sickness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
There are things humans can do to be better prepared for this sort of eventuality, as we are seeing with South Korea.
Many of the dead are over 70, threescore and ten is said in the Bible to be mans allotted time on Earth (see Psalm 90)
The Media coverage sometimes distorts the reality.
Facts about Covid-19
On Corona, the Media, and Propaganda
Until we have randomised tests done how do we put the deaths in context, of the real spread of the virus.
Francis Schaeffer has a good section on this in one of his books and in particular in reference to Camus's La Peste (The Plague). I don't have the book at hand at this moment, but I think its in The God Who Is There.