Avoid politics or religion, the old saying goes. Nowadays, we may have to add sports to the banned-topic list if we want reasonable discourse about the pandemic we continue to endure.

We’re pretty sure loyal subjects of Chiefs Kingdom are perfectly happy with Aaron Rodgers proving yet again that football players — taking livestock de-wormer to prevent COVID — are no less inclined to stupidity than the rest of us.

But cheeseheads in Packers Nation and scientists God put on this earth to help us through crises like this are aghast at how effectively he’s imitating a B-list actress who a few years back almost single-handedly undid years of rational science by wrongly claiming that other vaccines caused autism.

Why people reject advice from those who actually know and prefer to take the word of those who don’t is an even more serious malady that the current pandemic.

Week after week, we keep seeing the very tragic toll exacted on those who ignore God-given science and prefer to put their faith in charlatans preaching de-wormer but other hogwash from every political, religious, and now sporting pulpit around.

Even more concerning is how backlash from ill-informed followers of these dark- side prophets seem to have discouraged real experts from doing their job and giving citizens prompt warnings when things like more than half of schoolchildren are ordered into quarantine. Surely the rest of us — those who get their leaves raked, groceries carried, and evenings highlighted by performances by these young people — deserve to know we may be risking our lives doing so.

Politics should play no role in health. Making an issue political merely gives rise to such phrases as “modified quarantine,” which is just as stupid as saying a woman is “slightly pregnant.” If you’re exposed to someone with COVID, even a lab test can’t tell for three to five days whether you might be spreading it. Staying home is the only option. And the legislature, in its infinite lack of wisdom, took that opinion away by limiting online instruction. Every honest person involved in education knows most online classes are bad, but they’re still a lot better than spreading an often-fatal disease.

It’s no surprise we’ve had two surges in COVID infection this fall — one right after arts festivals and reunions and the other right after Halloween. Thanksgiving looms as the next. It’s time to quarantine our health policies from religious, political, and sporting influences before we create an economic depression — and depressing reality of continued deaths — that no amount of reckless deficit spending can cure.

— ERIC MEYER