Always_Ask_Questions

Avira > daven three times a day for apikorsim to die.

you are messing up my davening! I was looking and looking for apikorsim in Amidah. Something is wrong with mine or with yours… The brocha seems to be concerned with people who seek to harm us – minim (not in my version), malshinim, zeidim … you might have a real old siddur if it says “notzrim”, but who has apikorsim in this brocha?

2scents, you seem to consider an advantage for the community to get natural immunity quickly. If you mean that almost anyone gets sick, then it means that everyone at risk got sick and possibly died. I don’t think you mean that. I see two ways to get advantage of natural immunity:

1) expose young mobile population to virus. they are responsible for propagation, and thus protect elderly as yungeles will not be infecting them. Interesting idea, but it requires some discipline during that early stage – youngsters get sick but do not communicate with elders. Might have worked with those elders who isolated, like it seem R’ Edelstein @ Ponevezh did. Still, a lot of propagation goes through middle age working age population and exposing them all might mean a lot of death. Maybe this could have worked early on – ship all younsters – or all elderly – to a different location (Catskills, Florida) for a month, let youngsters get sick, and bring everyone back.

2) get early virus to avoid later deadlier variant. So far, it seems that “popular” strains alpha, delta are more contagious rather than more deadly.

> alwaysask, you dont own this country so please refrain from giving advice as if you are some sort of ruler.

I am giving an advice as a friend, rulers do not advise, they order. We live in a country/world that is ruled by many nations. You don’t need to run out of your wits if not everything is perfect. Generations of Jews lived honestly while being governed by much worse rulers than we do.

Possibly stand corrected: an online source that I can not fully vet mentions the story of R Kook potential visit to two communities as sourced from Yated Neeman (undated) and it says that this is what Hazon Ish replied to someone saying that he heard the rumor of Ch. Ch coming to EY. That explains why I read this in Hazon Ish Hagada …

missed the reply from Avira> they meticulously keep sefardi minhagim and mesorah, and the yeshiva dress is just that – because they are bnei Torah. .. My point was that they dropped their goyishe dress that is common in the uneducated elements

I know of Sephardi Rabbis who explicitly teach their community to meticulously follow the general community, such as using Asheknazi Eruvim (that some Chasidim would not using their understanding of “Sefard”) – and dress like the Ashkenazi Bnei Torah.

And how is their Goyishe Turban is worse than a Goiyishe Kapota or a German suit? We all pick up things, sometimes worthy, sometimes not.

2scents,
also anecdotally, in my community that has people coming from very different backgrounds, all clusters that I heard of came after people came from visiting those “normal” communities and then immediately going to shul or sending kids to school. In some cases, clusters grew somewhat due to some local individuals not staying in quarantine, but otherwise were stopped by adherence to quarantine and school closing protocols. Again, this is anecdotal, but no less solid that your statement that many communities were not affected.

2sc> but as an individual we cannot decide to make this into a torah ruling and even compare this to the mitzvah of sukkah. At least until our Rabbis and leaders do not tell us so.

You are free to ask your posek, of course for precise boundaries. Let us know what he says, please. But you probably aware that there are some mitzvot that are defined very precisely (tefilin, mezuza, more often bein Adam l’Makom), and sometimes generic ones – ahavta reeha kamoha. I apologize not listing all relevant mitzvos, dont have energy right now to go back to all halakhic sources I read, you are welcome either to look up teshuvot or, again, ask your posek, and let us know.

healyj > I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.

you can see all trials registered at gov ClinicalTrials site.
conbat covid HHS site lists 19 trials, 11 of them active
UK Recovery trial has trials at 186 sites with 40,000 patients
WHO/International Solidarity trial at 600 sites, 14,000 patients

I am not saying that everything they do is perfect, but it is a considerable effort.
Again, if you think Zelenko protocols superior to official trials, organize a real trial according to established practices – register your trial before you do it, use randomization, etc.

When non-Jews will complain that they were not given a fair chance, they would be given a mitzva of Sukkah that they are gonna to kick due to minor inconvenience (Sukkah is making us too hot and preventing flow of oxygen!). So, maybe COVID provides a similar pre-Moschiach test, giving everyone first a simple mitzva to wear a mask and SD. When even that was hard, Hashem sent a 2-shot vaccine – or a one-shot for those who found a 2-shot hard. Hopefully, more people will avail themselves to these simple mitzvos instead of kicking them and the world will be in the right spot.

If Hashem wouldn’t want us to worry, he wouldn’t tell us to make a fence on the roof. We were talking a lot about going to shul, but why bother if you don’t listen to the message.

>> I am completely bewildered that even if we could compare this pandemic to the flu season

Original estimates were that several million people in US would have died if no measures were taken. These estimates sounded over the top, but seem to be close to reality. Not even counting, how more virulent COVID would have become if it were allowed to run wild. Note the country names that are now sanitized from the variant names: British, Indian, Brazil, South Africa. There are (so far) no German/US/French/Canadian/Japanese/Ozzy variants because many countries dealt with the issue.

> if there is a chiyuv to love your wife

I am not sure. I’ll have to ask a shailah (youall happy?)

And I’ll do whatever my wife answers.

RW > everyone would have gotten reinfected by now.

RW, you are appealing to (your own) emotions. You first find articles that uncover problems with vaccines, then you find other articles that talk about immunity from COVID. And then you combine these two stories without knowing how they align.

I quoted articles that compare people under same conditions – some with vaccines, some with COVID.

RW > first of all the article said that people who had covid likely develop antibodies for most of their life.

RW, I think I see why we disagree. This is a very complicated issue and changing over time. you seem to read popular articles where reporters digest research papers for us. This is often fine. When we know a lot about, say, flu, and a new article about flu comes out and adds one more item about it, a popular article would easily explain it to us. Here we have research papers done very quickly, often preprints, sometimes written in a hurry, that address multiple issues. Your healthline reporter will have to simplify to make it readable, even presuming he understood the article.

If you click on the actual research paper, you will see that the paper does not say what you just said. I tried to summarize what the paper say. I may be mistaken also.

If you’re offered an unconventional product, you need to check whether it is legal and ethical before using it

RW, thanks for the sources. The Nature article talks about exactly the issue I mentioned – longer lasting protection from B Cells (that will produce antibodies in the future) that are developed both by (at least) mild Covid cases and vaccine. This is indeed hopeful. They have a caveat that variants might block this production of antibodies.

Healthline refers to the paper “Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals”. This paper shows 97% effectiveness of mRNA vaccines for those without previous infection and 66%(3x) effectiveness for those with previous infection – the author conclude from the latter that there is no benefit of giving vaccines to previously infected. This judgment is made from the world /WHO perspective that it is better to re-allocate vaccines to poor countries.

My note: High effectiveness of both vaccine and previous infection in this paper comparing to the ones I quoted is due to several factors: other papers I quoted defined previous infection as PCR tests given to everyone. This paper use only highly symptomatic cases as “infected” (those who were sick and went to take a test, with %age of positive test varying over time from 5% to 20% – higher than usual testing). Similarly, they measure 2nd infection as people coming for a test. So, these results are for “at least mild symptomatic COVID”. They also do not seem to adjust for demographics, while acknowledging that unvaccinated were younger (39 v 42 average age).

Bottom line: there is support to say that those with a symptomatic mild case have immunity comparable to vaccines. It could be further enhanced by one does of vaccine – unless you want to ethically donate it to 3rd world. Easy cases may be more risky. All of this pre-Delta.

And, of course, none of these papers suggest any benefit of actually not taking a vaccine and waiting for “natural immunity”.

RW> What numbers will I give for natural immunity when they aren’t reporting on them?

It may be google’s fault that you can’t find the numbers (not kidding). Google adapts their algorithms to what you click on – so you get Reuters, and I get Lancet… Here is what I found (all is for pre-Delta):

PCR-based infected people are 80% protected against re-infection, 47% for those over 65. Does not decrease at 6-7 months. [1] similar 83% result for UK medical personnel [2]. comparisons are in both cases with uninfected unvaccinated people with the same demographics. So, other than with older people, previous infection is close to vaccines.

Kentucky residents with previous infections: those of them who were unvaccinated had 2.3 more infections compared with those who were fully vaccinated [3]. So, vaccination provides additional benefit to those who were previously infected

[1] Hansen Assessment of protection against reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 among 4 million PCR-tested individuals in Denmark in 2020: a population-level observational study, Lancet, March 2021
[2] V Hall Do antibody positive healthcare workers have lower SARS-CoV-2 infection rates than antibody negative healthcare workers? preprint
[2] Alyson M. Cavanaugh, Reduced Risk of Reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 After COVID-19 Vaccination — Kentucky, May–June 2021

> How come they never did this with the flu btw? To mandate that everyone gets the vaccine?

a good comparison. Several reasons:
1) Flu natural R0 is 1.3, COVID 2+ for the Wuhan original, and 4+ for Delta.
2) Flu a- and pre-symptomatic transmission is not significant (see meta-study below). Thus, if you and your kids just stay home or SD or masked when sick, you won’t transmit
3) Most population has flu antibodies and, thus, only very young and very old/weak are vulnerable
4) Flu vaccines are less effective than COVID
If you multiple these factors together, the difference is huge

Eleni Patrozou, MDa,b and Leonard A. Mermel,Does Influenza Transmission Occur from Asymptomatic Infection or Prior to Symptom Onset? 2009

YS > lot of people I know who don’t want to get immunized because they have antibodies were tested positive for antibodies months ago and never actually showed COVID symptoms nor tested positive at any point.

non-professional understanding of theory: I think the issue is with T-cell protection. Antibodies are very specific and may be less effective with new variants. T-cell immunity is not helping with initial infection, but kicks in later to protect against serious disease and are also longer-lasting. T-cells generalize better and should be more protective against variants. Light cases of disease might not generate T-cell protection at all. Vaccines do, and possibly AZ and J&J more than mRNAs.

Bottom line, suggest to them to get one vaccine, with their initial disease working as a prime.

> Actually, 12-18. So far.

I don’t want to out anybody, but if you have 18 months of antibodies, you probably worked in the Wuhan lab or worked at the proverbial wet market butchering ferrets.

Health > Why does Medication or Vaccines take 9 – 10 years to be approved instead of a few months?!?

There are differences between medications and vaccines. My simple understanding:
medicines – balance between risk and benefit, often can be used in severe cases if there no other hope. On the other hand, medicines taken against chronic diseases, affect patients continuously and have potential of side effects, so require a lot of testing

vaccines – on one hand, their effect is time-limited. So, complications are expected only during a short time interval. On the other hand, it is given to millions of healthy people who have low probability of getting a disease, so even very low risk is not acceptable. During pandemic, though, risk of disease is very high, allowing for faster approval due to a higher benefit.

> how do i survive this lockdown,

People love quoting Rashbi as an ideal of learning v working. Why not learn like Rashbi and his son did, while hiding from Romans? Maybe share with us here something you learned.

One old book says “if the czar would understand the value of Torah, he would put a soldier with a rifle near each Jew”. while turning the page, I continued in my mind “and when someone attack the Jew, the soldier defends him”. The next page actually said: “and when the Jew distracts from learning, the soldier is pricking him with the bayonet …”. And that was before Internet. So, value the time that you got.

RW> Are you messing with us or just lack basic comprehension skills? You keep repeating that I said I am willing to avoid vaxpass venues. When did I say that! I clearly wrote (in answer to your question) that both vaccinated and nonvaccinated should boycott these venues who require proof of vaccination in order for things not to get worse.

I understand that you want me to boycott them, but I think your boycott would be sufficient. I hope you do not expect us respecting your desires more than you respect ours.

>> And that means to boycott places which require you show a vaccination card whether you are vaccinated or not.

So, we agree. Please boycott places that require a vaccination card and I hope you will not define us freedom to congregate in such places. Unfortunately, many anti-vax/mask/SD people disregard privacy of others. Now, I can see people without masks and duck anti-SD kissers, but vaccination status is harder to check. Anecdotally, many would lie or ignore recommendations/regulations, or even show fake cards. I am really happy you are not one of those.

We just had a parsha with Hashem giving us a mitzva to be empirical with potential demagogues, navvim sheker – check their predictions. I think Biden’s unprompted very specific prediction on July 8, less than 40 days before it happened, qualifies: “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the—of the United States from Afghanistan. “. Do we accept navi sheker defense when he blames the previous naviim?