“God has created medicines and provided us with intelligence to guard and take good care of the body so that we can live in good health…act like a man who wants to help put out the burning city. What else is the epidemic but a fire which instead of consuming wood and straw devours life and body? Therefore, I shall ask God mercifully to protect us.

Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance infect and pollute others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own or the death of others.

If my neighbor needs me, however, I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely, as stated above. See, this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy and does not tempt God. If the people in the city were to show themselves bold in their faith when a neighbor’s need so demands, and cautious when no emergency exist, and if everyone would help ward off contagion as best he can, then the death toll would indeed be moderate. But if some are too panicky and desert their neighbors in their plight, and if some are so foolish as not to take precautions but aggravate the contagion, then the devil has a heyday and many will die.

On both counts this is a grievous offense to God and to man-here it is tempting God; there it is bringing man into despair.” Martin Luther, circa 1527.

Luther, M. Whether one may flee from a deadly plague. Works of Martin Luther. vol. 43.  p. 131-132.

Full Text:
Luther, M. Whether one may flee from a deadly plague. Devotional Writings II, ed.  Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 43. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999. 119–38. https://reporter.lcms.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Plague-blogLW.pdf