# Biblically speaking, G\*d apparently got mad at America's sins and struck us with a plague. What was our sin?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biblically-speaking-g-d-apparently-got-mad-at-americas-sins-and-struck-us-with-a-plague-what-was-our-sin/954156>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [November 10, 2021, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biblically-speaking-g-d-apparently-got-mad-at-americas-sins-and-struck-us-with-a-plague-what-was-our-sin/954156 "2021-11-10T23:21:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 36

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**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2021, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biblically-speaking-g-d-apparently-got-mad-at-americas-sins-and-struck-us-with-a-plague-what-was-our-sin/954156/36 "2021-11-12T17:35:25Z")

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> [@Jasmine](#):
>
> Wow, so THAT’S the explanation! I was wondering why only the United States has COVID-19 and the rest of the world has nary a single case!

Historically speaking, of course, the Old Testament world had the same problem, right? So when God smote the Akkadians (made up example), the nature of virality meant the virus crossed the Akkadian border… but the sparsity of the 1300BCE global population likely contained the virus in a way a more interconnected (even if still scientifically illiterate) world … say w/ the Black Death in the 14th century (also thought by tens of millions of Christians as a punishment from God, regardless of origin) or the Indigenous Holocaust of the 16th… could not.

Now? Now we’ve been pretty good at containing these things - ebola, West Nile, bird flu, etc. Some more deadly than others, none even approaching the American death toll achieved by election day 2020. The one exception, of course, is AIDS, but most of us old enough to remember the AIDS outbreak will note that AIDS _also_ got politicized by the same ideology which politicized COVID, leading to millions of deaths for both diseases.

But I digress…

I note over the course of my life I have known hundreds of American conservatives (my Grandparents among them) who are fully convinced that God _literally_ blesses the USA, that our country has earned His favor and that we are truly the [City on a Hill to which Winthrop spoke.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_upon_a_Hill)

OK. Let’s accept that. Just for arguments sake, let’s accept that.

Given the events of the past 2 years, what does it then imply, for one believing as above, when the City on a Hill gets hit worse by a plague than any other nation, Christian or not? And, to the thread title, _why_ did the City on a Hill lose to COVID in a way it didn’t lose to ebola, W Nile, etc?

Anyway, those are rhetorical questions. I’m not really expecting you to answer, Jasmine: as noted in the OP, I’m not interested in arguing the premise because the countering premise (“America has been blessed by God”) is also not being argued. That’s not the topic here.

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