These days Pilate would use COVID as an excuse to have Jesus and the thieves released. Especially since Pilate wasn't keen on having Him crucified in the first place. ...raising an interesting alternate time-line... "Let this cup pass from me" and it does. Then what?

"We are very calm and cheerful. So far there has been no Mass and no Communion; maybe that will come later. Now we have a chance to experience, a little, how to live purely from within." ~St. Edith Stein ( Written from Westerbork transit camp, August 1942)