Besides common sense and sheer prudence, here is an O.T. (Old Testament)-based reason why individual believers, church leaders, and religious congregations who opt to or are tempted to strike a recalcitrant tone towards the government mandated social distancing edict should play along instead:

Current measures to level and then bend downward the curve of the fatalities or the number of positive diagnoses of this highly infectious COVID-19 parallel, if not imitate, Leviticus 13 divine instructions on how to guard against  community outbreak of leprosy (aka Hansen’s disease), a similarly infectious disease though non-fatal.

A positive diagnosis in the case of COVID-19 indicates detection of vira-RNA. Positive markers of leprosy consists of any of the following: a sore that runs more than skin deep and has hair on it that turns white or yellow (Lev 13:3; 29-30); a white swelling “in the skin that has turned the hair white and if there is a raw flesh in the swelling” (v. 9); a rash that has spread in the skin (v. 8); a white swelling or a reddish-white spot that supplants a boil or a burn on the skin, is more than skin deep, and the hair on it has turned white (vv. 19-20; 24-25); a swollen sore on a male’s bald head or forehead that turns reddish-white (vv 43-44).

Individuals who test positive for corona virus and do not need hospitalization are called upon to seal themselves tight at home in total self-isolation. Curiously Leviticus instructs lepers to not only wear torn clothes, let their hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of their face (wear a mask?), cry out, “Unclean! Unclean!,” but also live alone outside the camp (Lev 13:45)

Alongside folks who have tested positive, untested individuals—untested due to lack of a sufficient number of testing kits– who experience symptoms of or have been exposed to someone with the corona virus must self-isolate for 14 days. Coincidentally Leviticus prescribes a specific number of days of quarantine for people exhibiting symptoms that have the potential of morphing into full blown leprosy. An individual with a white shiny spot on the skin that does not appear to be more than skin deep and the hair in it has not turned white is subject to a total of 14 days of isolation if after the first seven days the sore is unchanged and has not spread in the skin (Lev 13:4-5, cf. vv31-32). Seven days of isolation is prescribed when a white swelling or a reddish-white spot that has supplanted a boil on the skin has no white hair in it, is not more than skin deep and has faded (v. 21, cf. v. 26)