Abstract

The COVID-19 epidemic has sparked unprecedented reactions, which caused meaningful discussions about the boundaries of public health authority and religious freedom. Declarements of emergency at all governmental levels to mitigate the social effects of COVID-19 may modify constitutional standards, but they do not entirely nullify the freedom to gather and express one's right to free speech. However, no one has the absolute right to injure others in the name of their religion. A legally sound compromise can be found between the goals of community public health and individual religious freedom. There is debate concerning finding it during the epidemic. Governmental temporary orders to halt massive religious gatherings in order to preserve social distances are among the most divisive topics. Some religious leaders have loudly complained, but the majority have cooperated. The first step in coming to an agreement is evaluating the legal principles of separation. A question that often arises is did the nations who tightened their religious restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic see a higher number of COVID-19 cases and deaths as compared to the nations that did not? Many religious institutions disobeyed laws prohibiting public worship during the epidemic, which alarmed many commentators, decision-makers, and opponents of religion that churches, mosques, synagogues, and other places of worship serve as COVID-19 breeding grounds. This perspective saw religious freedom as a barrier to the fight against the virus. We assess this claim in this article. We discover that greater rates of COVID-19 cases and fatalities were not more likely to occur in nations that preserved their levels of religious freedom during the epidemic. The outcomes hold up well under various model parameters.

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