OK, in trying to be as fair as possible, I think Tapi's legitimate concern is about treating the Faith as magic, as something where we are SURE bad things won't happen to us. It IS tempting God to do something known to be definitely dangerous, and asserting that nothing will happen to YOU because the church or the Chalice is holy. Ananias and Sapphira died in a temple, as I recall. We have to admit that, unless God CHOOSES to spare us, we are subject to evil and danger.
But I think the rub lies in the part about "known to be definitely dangerous". We have seen that while the number of deaths attributed to COVID appears large, something over 2 million, I think, that is WORLDWIDE and over an entire year. Even if they were all in America that doesn't add up to 1 percent of the population, and it's spread all over the world. We have an incredibly strong basis to think that the bishops, being human, are seriously overreacting in trying to please the authorities, who are overreacting, whether you believe that overreaction to be out of honest concern, or malicious lust of power.
I think misunderstanding is made worse between people who suffer heavily from the restrictions themselves, vs those who suffer little or not at all. People who find themselves isolated, lonely, underemployed or unemployed, in depression or despair are much more likely to be willing to face what they see as reasonable risk, as with any flu, rather than tolerate ongoing and indefinite control of public life than those in government employ, those considered "essential workers", who have little to lose from the restrictions. I myself sympathize much more with the former than with the latter. If people would rather die than go on like this, I'd say you have a bigger problem than any flu. That's why I have a really hard time supporting any continuation of restrictions. All of the arguments that worked a year ago for "two weeks to flatten the curve" don't work for me any more. I'd rather live and die with the ordinary risks of mortality, than live in a futile and misguided effort (based on dubious science) to prevent death,which is definitely going to happen to me sooner rather than later with ongoing restrictions.
We are absolutely going to die. We cannot ultimately prevent that. An attitude that sees temporal death as the greatest possible evil is not Orthodox.
