Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
DY > The evidence shows that previous Covid infection offers more protection than vaccination
This may be true, but not fully established yet. “Infection” may involve a little or a lot of exposure. Vaccines also do not produce same results – some people get more protected, some less, but the response to the vaccine seem to be more regular – after all, everyone gets the same carefully measured amount of exposure.
It may be that Feds are too conservative in not trying to guess better rules and use instead “lo plug” approach instead of measuring antibodies and giving personal guidelines to people. It may be that virus specialists are trying to make public policy without having training. I sae recently that CDC Dr Walensky mentions a need for social scientists to get involved. This is a little late and a little slow …
this sounds like a silly argument, bordering on inappropriate – Avira preferring short skirts and UJM – pants … As to the answer to your hypothetical question, it well may depend on who is asking. Avira clearly thinks of someone from his community and he has a point. Someone from a different community might have a different attitude depending on her environment. So, maybe there is no one answer here. Teiku.
Avira,
hajj – Muslims arguably is one major monotheistic religion, and you always look at Israeli problems from a religious prospective, now turns out you are affected by secular trends of seeing Muslims as enemies. Seems like you are erring on a side of hating in multiple dimensions. And hajj would be different from Taliban, lots of non-Taliban muslims go on hajj, according to my limited knowledge.Re: Rav Ovadia – I don’t think this is about individual psak. I think the objection is to the overall trend of seeking external “inspiration”. And as derech eretz kodma l’Torah, a multitude of reported transgressions and misbehaviors makes this activity suspicious. Now, I happened to meet one of the first, if not the first, people who was able to visit Uman at the end of USSR, and he was an erliche Chasidishe Rebbe, so there should not be an objection to visiting Uman. Maybe you can advise them to visit at some other times except R’H?
Re:Ukraine. I understand that Ukrainians, as well as other Eastern-European countries are primarily focused on negating Russian influence, so they venerate any kind of local heros (although Chmelnitski was pro-Russian, so I am not sure here). We just need to make sure we are not getting in the same trap as between WW1 and WW2 when Jewish nationalists joined Nazis and Soviets in pressing these countries for their treatment of minorities. Whatever their sins were/area, they paled in comparison to those vandals. Same now, Ukraine has a Jewish president and is half-occupied by Russia, and we should worry about their 17th century sins … Same as fighting Poland regarding expiration of their restitution law while there is no restitution law in Russia and Belorussia as far as I know. Wouldn’t we want to have Volozhin Yeshiva back?
RW, unvaccinated people could just do the rest of the people a favor and keep out of museums on chol hamoed.
For those who had Covid, whether by act of G-d or by negligence, it is not enough to rely on that alone to conclude that you are not in danger or not a danger to others. Those who measure high antibody count have a stronger leg to stand on, but I am not sure what is percentage of people who 1) belong to the group of unvaccinated, 2) had Covid, and 3) continue monitoring their antibody level. (1) and (2) are mostly uneducated either very rural or very urban, while (3) presumes some
level of education. This might cover a section of Jewish community, but probably not the others.That said, FDA & CDC will probably get to the issue of antibodies of covid survivors after it resolves all the other urgent issues – boosters for Moderna, J&J, vaccines for children, etc. These people sound a little overworked for now …
How is wearing red strings goes with the fashion of wearing black only and traditional halakha that red is not appropriate for women?
eric55, there are multiple vaccines from multiple companies and governments available. Do you have an explanation for why each of them is not to be trusted?
a little more details on the paper provaxx refers:
for 18-49 and 50-64 groups, risk of hospitalization decreases by 10-15 both in april-june and june-july time intervals, and death rates by 16x (with 18-49 in april-june being 30x)for 65+, hospitalization decrease in april-june is 13 and in june-july 8, death decrease 16 and 10.
So, there is substantial decrease for 65+ and in one measure for 18-49 due to a combination of delta and time. It is possible that part of the decrease is due to an increasing number of previously infected among remaining unvaxed and more active people moving from unvaxed into vaxed column.
RW > Boycott everything whether you are vaccinated or not.
RW, 81% of adults are vaccinated in NYC. So, I suspect most of them would prefer to boycott you rather than support remaining refusniks. Also, on old USENET, there used to be a rule that the one who first invokes Nazis in an argument – loses it.
we do know some things now. So, look at early predictions and how they compare with later knowledge to estimate magnitude of errors and biases. For example, we had phase 3 results for vaccines and later much bigger observational studies. So, you can compare phase 3 results with observations under same conditions (original Wuhan and right after vaccine) – those were pretty on target both in safety and efficiency. and then, there are changes in conditions – Delta and 6 months later.
As ahdus seems to be a theme of Sukkos, poking and shoving other congregants looks counter-productive. Is it the same in Israel, (areas where people serve) – one would think that people trained in holding their weapons safely should be able to deal with lulavim.
Maybe it is the idea – walking around with lulavim forces us to confront a need to be careful and not to poke others?
covid caveat: you can use a four amot long lulav to protect your private space.
RW> -are you being sarcastic? Because there are definitely cases when people have tried many options.
I am not sarcastic. I am sure there are people who tried them all. But if this were true in general, we would have many questions on each of these steps: where can I find a kosher gym, should I daven or run first, what is teshuva for offending people, how do I measure quality of my learning, etc.
RebE: If the information entered into a computer is not reliable, the information received after its processing will also be unreliable.
Not always. If information is noisy but unbiased and multiple pieces of information are independent, then by Central Limit Theorem, average estimate will converge to a normal distribution with variance decreasing linear with number of independent pieces of information. Thus, meta-analysis of multiple legit independent studies, each with different flaws, is better than each of them separately.
GH > Bigger minyanim are better minyanim
It may be not just size, but also unity (a Sukkos theme): R Berel Wein says that if there are 100 Jews in a town, Hashem wants them to be in one shul. What they do? 10 shuls with 10 people. What do they end up with? 11 shuls with 9 people. I am adding – you can be the 100th and make a minyan at all of them. This is all pre-covid, of course,
Someone (an inside person) here said now: we have inside and outside people. for Sukkos, we all join together finally.
> shul is too small.
R Salanter called a guy a thief for standing near a window in a filled out shul, monopolizing fresh air.
Goldilocks > Very few people today would be capable of living like that.
I understand. We do indeed conclude that many tried to live like Rashbi (learn and not work) and failed. Still, we can’t take some inspiration from them. So, if there is anything you can emulate them and help humanity to fight the pandemic, please do – skip a vacation, a playdate, sit further away from an old person, wear a mask properly when others are putting it half-way ….
paraphrasing: Rashbi and his son came from the cave and saw a farmer running in a double mask. This guy only cares about viruses and not Torah! Why do you have two masks, they asked – one to protect myself, and one to protect other Yiden ….
Beitzah 25 proves from a piece of raw meat from a hospitalized cow that we are not allowed to eat at the end of yom tov – that derech eretz is from the Torah and, in general, Hashem gave us Torah so that oterwise, Jews with their azut will not give space to other nations to live.
A fitting food for thought for Simchat Torah and a l’chaim for an increasing derech eretz on this site.
> have gone OTD
Read Bibi’s father insightful book about Abarbanel where he concludes that however painful it was for Ab. to miss the upcoming signs of expulsion, at the end, he would probably not be able to save the day anyway against the tide, but his later work encouraged the expelled Jews to find strength to continue. (some of the description parallels times in Bibi’s reign where he could not stop the tide, but persevered anyway ..). So, the family road has a direction.
Mindful, what is the explanation given for the preference of black? I could not get the theory if it out of my daughters.
In Gemora, black was for those who wanted to go sin and would go to a different city. True, there were inappropriate colors (the Rav who assaulted an inappropriately dressed lady at the shuk who turned out to be non-Jewish and he gladly paid the fine). And it is cultural (I think an appropriate present for an Israeli lady is linen clothes, while for Babylonian – colorful).
But what is specific explanation for black v. any other reasonable colors?
> While in Bais Yaakov I don’t think you’ll find much of this problem. It often starts (among those with this problem) after graduation.
I think we often missing the logical links in such cases. If the above statement is partially true, then it is obviously a problem with educational system if the problem starts after (as Mindful explained). Similarly, for MO school graduates that do not take tefiling to college, the problem started at school.
A longer view – when we blame “Reform”, we sometimes do not consider that something in the Jewish community made Reform an attractive alternative at the time.hajj is same shoresh as Hebrew hag. So, an appropriate word. Also, notice that Hag usually means traveling to EY, while both Hajj and Umanjj call for people to travel from EY to a foreign place. There are also theological parallels that are probably not appropriate for this site.
It seems that everyone agrees that last year was full of aveiros like a Ukrainian Rimon – breaking the laws in multiple countries, infecting people, creating Hillul Hashem. This year hopefully went better and healthier, but I wonder whether one may associate oneself with an event that acquired such great reputation.
quoting a local Rav – we have now inside (davening) yidden and outside yidden,
now for sukkos, we finally have everyone in the same placenisht, you have a point. Except these guys are not really going anywhere, they landed on the same planet they started! Would you be patur min Hasukkah if you decide to run marathon around your town?
Anyway, travelling “hutz laaretz” is definitely taking a new meaning.
> Anyone who wants to live a somewhat normal life, not locked into their homes
Careful with “anyone”.
Vilna Gaon with his lifestyle would not get it. Rashbi would not have even noticed.4. Proven safer than the disease by a factor of at least 100x
Does not apply. chance of having many of the diseases are well below 1%, thus vaccine has to be 100x safer than the disease. With COVID, we are talking at least 10%, if not 50% depending on age and lifestyle. Thus, you just need to prove that vaccine is 10x safer than the disease. This essentially means that we should have started giving vaccines to nursing home residents before Phase 3.
I’ve seen research pointing both ways – on one hand, low levels of re-infections, on the other – statements similar to “Health” – second time cases are sometimes much harder. Possibly, this means that first infection creates immunity for a large group of people (for some time?) but makes it worse for those whose immunity did not work out well.
Just speculating what could be the difference between re-infection and infection after vaccine:
1) unclear doses – may be not enough to provide sufficient immunity
2) internal damage after the first infection creates additional risk for the 2nd infection?More on possible reasons for anti-everything movement:
maybe Jewish community became too comfortable in US gwtting into a Yeshurun state of mind. We have established communities, built institutions, have places for comfortable vacations. So, a disruptive event that requires changing lifestyle in some way is rejected emotionally. What do you mean I cannot travel to my favorite vacation spot because of some invisible reason? I am doing so many mitzvos, please do not distract me with the unseen reality.YS
> distrust of governmentI presume of “liberal” government. I think most communities were very pro-Trump. So, how does it make sense to not accept vaccines developed under Trump?
> anti-vax leaders
This might be a one off, the overall phenomenon cuts across many communities, minhagim and even gefilte fish line> social media
I also think this is huge. I think what is happening: an average “traditional” internet user has capability to do an internet search, look up some sites, understands difference between sites. Social media user (esp second-hand one who just hears something from a social media user) does not differentiate between sources as they all appear on his wall (that’s what I heard, not a social media user myself).maybe something is lost in transmission or translation. Could you please clarify what exactly is your doctor saying.
> how you think others should behave but imply several times that they aren’t.
So, if you agree with the proposed path and think that people are doing that, please inform me of that.
If you disagree, then explain why. That is what discussions are for.> When you make dumb comments like this
Apologize for the joke.
> relay the general worries and line of thinking some doctors have.
As I mentioned, you need to compare similar effects – either deaths or serious illness in both cases.
You mentioned before about “your doctor” not recommending you a vaccine – is this what YOUR doctor say? If he is indeed so sloppy, you may look for another one. But maybe you refer to a generic internet-quoted “doctor”, then we can just disregard what they say.DY > First show me evidence that frum people are more antivax than the general population
a good question. We may not be more, depends what your baseline is. I implicitly compare Jews I know with non-Jews I know professionally and this may not be a fair comparison. Furthermore, what we see in the street does not include people who are not in the street. Still, I’d like to understand what is the source of the movement. We have here people posting information but it is hard to pin-point what lead them to this position.
DY > Show me evidence that cloth masks do anything
The Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh, Sep 2021A
by Jason Abaluck et althey randomized 600 villages with no and different types of masks and followed for 8 weeks. Surgical masks show 12% decrease of symptomatic cases and 35% in 60+ y.olds . Really cloth masks – 6%, not sure why someone wears those when surgical ones are available. SD increased by 5% (7% in the market, 0% in mosques)
Note this is a result of real-life intervention by giving out masks, not by forcing everyone to wear them. In villages with no intervention, 13% would wear them, after intervention – 42%. Also increased in mosques. Distribution of masks mattered, no additional measures – text messages, payments, ads did not matter.
> he is an oines and was not m’vatel p’ru ur’vu.
On the other hand, if someone fulfils pru urvu while not taking a vaccine, doing shiduchim without the mask, and having an unsafe wedding – this would be mitzva b’yadei averah. Not sure what the status of the kids would be then.
Yserbius > with all this anti-vaccine propaganda that the frum oilem is unfortunately falling for
Can we pin-point what is the source? I have several hypotheses, each might be true to an extent. Any others?
1) Is it simply that some get info from social media and then propagate to those who do not have online source or time/inclination/skills to search? If this is so, then it shows that our community is not protected against online viruses even being in large part offline, as information still travels.2) Community effect – when you are in a community where nobody takes precautions, you behave like everyone and then start processing information accordingly to justify that.
3) Giving up – given that community is so connected and every family has lots of kids in schools, we were often hit hard early and then there is not much hope to avoid exposure in daily life. If you crum lots of people/kids into a shul/school without good ventilation for a long time, then masks will not help much, short of N95s. Then, like in (2), you have to convince yourself that you are not doing an aveirah by giving credence to any piece of information that justifies your position.
4) Inability to see a big picture of effect on older people, etc – a lot of sickness happens in nursing homes, hospitals, etc, people, B’H are not falling down on the street. So, a little of information, ability to count, and abstract thinking is required and is not alaways avialble.
5) Even as many (most?) Rabbonim are for vaccination, and many are for various measures (capsules, testing, masking), seems like a large part of the community does not hear or does not care. Maybe eople surrounding gedolim and those in charge of media are affected like everyone else and are not emphasizing the message? For example, I saw for the first time this spring that R Edelsteon, Ponevezh, gave his first public lecture – and only to vaccinated students and behind a huge screen. I did not see anything before that he was isolating for a year before. I may have missed that, but maybe it was just not a cool story to publish?
> 1050 –
without going into your analysis –
1) you are comparing 1000 who died with “risk from vaccine”. you need to compare it with the “risk of dying from vaccine”, or risk of sickness from both. Apple to apples, or oranges to oranges. Please correct the comparison.
2) when you compare risk of covid v risk of vaccine directly – both effects are not fully known. One is from a virus that damages internal organs and triggers immune reaction, another – just triggers immune reaction. One is from Wuhan, another – from a Western lab. If you work from home and daven outside – you may argue that your chance of getting Covid is much less than certain effect of vaccine, and makes sense to wait for more info. If you are constantly exposed, then the preference for covid v vaccine should be clear.3) co-morbidities include high blood pressure and being overweight, and also check where 6% number comes from – is it for al ages, for young people?
4) research I ‘saw is that viral load for vaccinated is way lower. Most risk for vaxed is from unvaxed. If you have a reference, we can review.this trial showed no significant difference of HCQ in outpatient setting
April 22, 2021 Effect of Early Treatment With Hydroxychloroquine or Lopinavir and Ritonavir on Risk of Hospitalization Among Patients With COVID-19 The TOGETHER Randomized Clinical TrialNov 2020 Do Zinc Supplements Enhance the Clinical Efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine?: a Randomized, Multicenter Trial
this trial showed no benefit adding ZincI am not saying these articles are decisive. for example, first article showed 10% improvement, below statistical significance. But to claim that there are no such studies is not correct.
Again, I would be curious to know how you came to conclusion that such studies do not exist –
did you check clinical trial database yourself; did you search duck-duck-go; or did you read this claim somewhere and accepted?DY > Because there’s a bigger risk in not taking it.
One research I saw was that death rate in nursing homes was 50% higher in towns with colleges. Statistics collected over multiple areas in USA. Attributed to medical students bringing it in, despite all protection measures and testing. So, the fact is that anyone who can be a host to the virus can potentially lead to someone being sick.
So, if you are a person who would be happy to help an old lady cross the road (I presume everyone here would be), then you can as well do little things to help cure the world by taking a vaccine, travelling less, not going into large gathering, etc.
Give the guys their due – they figured out that it is easier to travel on Yom Kippur than on Sukkos. Drilling holes was not approved. You can say that cold temperature outside is enough of an exemption.
On the other hand, if the whole capsule lives for less than a week, can it qualify as a temporary dwelling?> Chasam Sofer forbids traveling in a steamboat on shabbos
Raban Gamliel did, sans the steam engine. What is the difference?
Furthermore, it took weeks to get from Europe to America before Lindbergh – did no follower of Chasam Sofer come here? Maybe there are some conditions for this psak – leisure or when other forms of travel are available?
Also, is more than 18 minutes drive qualifies as “fresh”?
common > “US researchers claim.”
mahybe I missed it, but is it possible to get a title or authors of a study you are quoting?
Seems like you are quoting popular news article quoting it, what type of a site is it?can we do some research on our own here? can I ask people post what was the source and the path to the information they are posting? This well help us understand what our sources are and what biases and influences are. We always do it in Jewish discussion, and we know well differences between Amoraim and Tannaim, etc.
For example, my recent claim ” masks seem to lead to higher SD” is from a research paper that I read in full, found it by a reference from a news site.
> who knows where and when they were baked.
they would have a date and a SKU number on them that will lead you to the factory.
OU would be able to tell you that.You may still have them pas isroel if they were baked before yom kippur and OU made an arrangement.
> and they are not see through
maybe someone thinks that they are see through?! you know about the guy who complained about inappropriate view across the street? They put a fence. He still called to complain – I still can see it when I get up on a chair!
thanks, I was not aware of this recent controversy at Cochrane. I think this supports the idea that Cochrane was considered the authoritative meta-review group. Did this change now? I looked up – there is nothing substantial coming later after this 2018 controversy, hat is partially personal, partially scientific. The only other later articles are by the person who lost in 2018 and continues writing about it on sites with such intriguing names as “mad in america”…
On substance, the discussion is
1) are RCTs biased by design as they are often funded by industry
2) do RCTs reflect clinical experience, as they often provide a simplistic set up and weed out complex patients, preferring patients with only one diagnosis, and ignore clinician input.I think both points may be valid, but to what degree? RCT meta-analysis still seems to be the best way to get noise out of the data. Hopefully, analysis of real data will find way into meta-analysis. This seem to be happening now with COVID. Some of the real data analysis, including from Israel, uses post-processing that emulates RCTs – by pairing patients from 2 groups based on similar demographic attributes.
The core question is – all vaccines by now were tested on a very large number of people, but they were not tested over long period of time. So, then the question is: during long-term testing of vaccines in last, say, 40 years: is it often that a vaccine is seen as safe after 1 year, but problems are discovered after a longer time period. Note, this is not about complications discovered simply by testing more people, but specifically 3-5 years after a specific patient got vaccinated.
I did a very brief search of vaccine trial reports several months ago and did not find any. Medicines seems to be more prone to side effects over time, as they are taken continuously. Maybe, others can find examples, and when we will have a baseline: say, 5 out of 50 vaccines had a side effect found after 3 years and how severe they typically are.
mobico, morbidity numbers are not well defined: what is a case? symptomatic? PCR? leading to antibodies? anyone who chanced on a virus for 1 minute? for 1 hour? There are estimates of how many true cases are there, but they are just that – estimates. These numbers are hard to compare across countries.
what is true – taht too many people died, and, at this point, many of these deaths are preventable in rich countries through their own and others’ vaccination … So, I think – people who do something inappropriately risky are doing an aveirah at that moment. those who refrain from taking vaccine when it is appropriate do an aveirah every moment they are not taking it.
Avram, Syag, again, I mention these issues because they (in my opinion) affect how one should behave. So, I can’t make a general statement that covers both people who are self-sustaining and those who take money from others. I brought R Salanter as an example, I am not against R Salanter, I hope you are also not.