Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
@n0mesorah It seems that there’s a large and significant portion of the frum oilom that during 2020 were very quick to deride public officials, and ignore restrictions with all sorts of cheshboinois and svarahs while thousands died from COVID. Lifi aniyas da’ati, that’s your crowd.
I have only making one point in this thread. The government has a right to mandate that people wear masks when around others. It’s not difficult and it’s not confusing.
What is “an intrusion on normality”? Last I checked, COVID-19 was a massive intrusion on normality. In 2020 there was no more normal. So being mandated to wear a mask when out in public in order to protect people around you was as normal as you’re going to get.
The pandemic is, unfortunately, still with us. But I am referring to last year when it was far worse and we didn’t have a vaccine. Now, Baruch Hashem, when you have communities where 90% of the klal were vaccinated there isn’t the same danger so it’s a completely different discussion.
This entire thread is about something Dr. Fauci said. Why would I think anyone commenting here would not try to understand what he said? He’s a public official trying his best. Sometimes his best involves acting before there’s data just in case the data shows his assumptions to be wrong.
@Health The only thing I understood from your comment is this: “Michael Flynn lied and the Dominion voting machines are not connected to the Internet”.
@shomershabbat I haven’t heard any firsthand stories of major issues directly related to vaccinations. It’s always “a friend of a friend” or a screenshot of a Facebook page. But I do know of many firsthand stories of major issues that people had from COVID, including children or people who got it from children. “Just do the research” and “All on the web” are nariche statements. I have read these websites that claim to show the research. I don’t trust them. Especially since so many of them are so anti-Semitic. Look I’m not saying we need to start lining up infants to get the shot immediately, but if you’re giving me tzvei tzdadim of a pshat, one from a doctor who I literally trust with my life, and one from some random website on the Internet, it’s not a shayloh who’s word I’ll take.
Also, and this goes for @Always_Ask_Questions too, my doctor didn’t actually tell me anything yet and I haven’t yet asked. But whatever she says, I will take very seriously into account when making my decision. And I will double check with other experts. My town is zocheh to have a team of doctors who have been tirelessly researching COVID and advising the local Va’ad and all the Yeshivos on their decisions. So it’s not just “some med school graduate” nor are they “misguided”. They are literally devoting hours every day to investigating and reading the literature on COVID and the vaccines. So yeah, I trust them.
@Health Because I’m not sitting here for 20 minutes summarizing something that you can read in five. Look, I’ll spend a few minutes with a few points and that’s it. If you don’t like them, feel free to debunk. But I won’t accept anything from you that starts with “LIES!!!!!!” and has zero evidence to back up the claim.
- Michael Flynn claims that the voting machines are connected to the Internet. That is false. They are by design not Internet accessible. They connect to a local server, which is isolated from the internet.Mr. Flynn brings no proof to his claim.
- Mr. Flynn then makes a claim of 150,000 fake votes in Maricopa county. There is no record of that many fake votes and he doesn’t say where he got his numbers from. What’s likely is that he was unaware that a judge extended the voter registration deadline and many people registered after the old deadline, but before the new one. But that’s still only 30,000 voters, not 150,000.
- Last one. The Michigan voting spikes. There was an issue where a voting reporting website had an error that showed Biden 100,000 votes more than he should have had. The error never made it into the official tally, it was just what was being updated live for the press. And it was corrected within the hour.
But let’s get back to @MadeAliyah’s original post.
Dr. Fauci said that he’s hesitant to tell vaccinated people that they can take off their masks until the data comes in that the vaccine significantly stopped the spread. He had every reason to believe that it would, but just wanted to be 100% sure. That isn’t fearmongering, that’s being careful.
@n0mesorah You didn’t explain your original comment at all! And your points are absolutely not mutually exclusive.
I think you mistake in reasoning is the same one a lot of your crowd has been making. No one said that masks will “avert the threat” completely. Rather, masks are simply a major part of an equation that also includes social distancing, testing, and handwashing. So to combine your two statements into one that applied to the situation in 2020:
The threat of coronavirus in the past year to the wearer and those around him, is significantly more than other viruses. And masks helped avert the threat. Since it was a pandemic, a public health emergency, all lines of safety measures should be invoked to slow the disease as much as possible, and to prevent the collapse of societal structures. Therefore masks and other health and social distancing mandates were necessary.
@Health I’m not sitting through two hours of video and debunking it piece by piece. So I showed you where to find someone who did and does. If you want to pick ten minutes of the video to discuss, then do so. Otherwise you’re just debating by throwing garbage and declaring yourself a winner.
Minhag HaGra in much of Eretz Yisroel is very Oberlander like. They say piyutim on Yom Tov, full Slichos on RH/YK, and LeDovid Baruch before Ma’ariv on Motzei Shabbos.
I mean, a lot of what you are all saying makes some sort of sense. There’s definitely less of a need for kids to get COVID vaccinated than adults. But I still disagree with one major point. I trust my doctor a thousand times more than anything I read on the Internet. Otherwise, why go to a doctor at all?
- You are wrong about speed limits and “misuse of public property”. They are to prevent deaths and injuries. Just like masks are to prevent deaths and hospitalizations
- Ethically the correct thing to do would be to slow the spread. No matter which way you cut it, millions of deaths worldwide could have been prevented by wearing a mask. So yes, masks should have been required. Your disagreement because “government mandating my body grrr!” doesn’t hold a lot of water (or any at all).
Now on to your questions:
- Speed limits are as low as possible to reduce deaths. It’s unsafe drivers, unsafe vehicles, and unsafe road activity that cause accidents. If people would adhere to road laws, accidents would be severely reduced. Kind of like how COVID would have been severely reduced had people listened to government masking and social distancing laws
- The flu is not deadlier than COVID. We’ve discussed this. The deadliness of COVID isn’t the virus itself, but how fast it transmits. What must be done to prevent flu transmission isn’t enough to prevent COVID transmission. Hence masking.
@n0mesorah If I understand your comment correctly (and please excuse me if I don’t, I’m feeling stupider than usual today) you’re saying that the government has no need to regulate safety for things that are common sense? I pashut don’t get that reasoning. Governments regulates common sense safety measures all the time to stop people who don’t use common sense.
Ferrets excrete a natural musk that smells to high heaven.
Tommy Lapid hated Yiddishkeit with a passion. Yishai isn’t the biggest fan of Chareidim, but he understands enough that he doesn’t oppose their mere existence.
@Same-Klein My research consists of asking my doctor, pediatrician, and doctors I know. If they say it’s important, then I listen to them. If they would say it’s bad for their health, I would listen to them.
@ujm A cookie?! You’re so fancy all of a sudden? The Yekke is sitting down with half a piece of unsugared kichel and a cup of seltzer.
The closest Hebrew word to “rights” is “zechuyos”. A zechus isn’t a right but a privilege. Everything we can do, we do because we have the zechus to do so. And that zechus can be taken away.
To add to what everyone is saying, being Yekkish is more than just waiting three hours between meat and milk. It’s an attitude, a mindset, and a hashkafa. I find it incredibly sad that there are individuals who think that Minhagei Ashkenaz can be boiled down to a few rote customs that don’t take much conviction to uphold. It’s not just about showing up on time (although that’s part of it). It means being reliable, being consistent. It means being flabbergasted that another yid could possibly cheat, like the famous story of Rav Schwab ZT”L who was asked about a case involving a frum person who committed tax fraud, “Nu? Was he frum or did he cheat on his taxes? You can’t have both!”. It’s Torah Im Derech Eretz, but it’s so much more than that! It’s understanding what it means to view the world through the lens of Torah and not shut yourself away, but appreciate Hashem’s beauty in all the gashmiyus from science to literature. It’s about change, not clinging to “that’s what was always done”, but to not be afraid to move things around if necessity arises. Do you know why we don’t have any Sifrei Halacha from Rav Breuer or Rav Hirsch? Because it’s a big part of Yekkishkeit that things change, and every psak may be only a Hora’as Shoh. What a Rav said fifty years ago may no longer be applicable and shouldn’t be looked at like Torah MiSinai chas v’shalom. It has it’s own way to make a Kiddush Hashem, to show the world the beauty of the Torah by example by following the Torah to be exemplary human beings in the eyes of the world. It’s not about walling Torah off from the world and cultivating it in a small, fenced garden. But about seeing how there are no walls to the Torah, and the only way to truly be a Ben Torah is to see how everything and anything is Torah!
But yeah. Wimples and tallios are nice. That’s what people like. Whatever.
@Health I’m playing your game. You repeatedly refused to post a single shred of evidence except for Jessy Jacob and instead insisted I watch two hours worth of video. So I’m doing the same. Instead of debunking your claims, I’m insisting you read articles and watch videos debunking those claims.
Now, if you would pick something specific that we can talk about, I would be all ears. Until then, you have reading and watching to do.
Genetics. Yekkishkeit is generally passed from father to son (with a few notable exceptions, like one of Rav Breuer’s daughters who married a Litvak but raised her kids to wear tallios and wait three hours) . So if a yekke has no children, or only daughters, it’s unlikely his grandkids will be Yekkish. So every generation there are fewer and fewer tallios in middle school.
@MadeAliyah I asked first. I gave you answers to all of your questions, and repeated several of them. I’m not answering again until you answer these two:
- Why are speed limits different than mandatory masking?
- Why are the near-unanimous expert opinions of epidemiologists and doctors not enough proof that you should wear a mask during a global pandemic?
Good Shabbos!
@n0mesorah Yeah yeah, you can nitpick the differences, but the moshol still works. The government has a right to tell you that you can’t do 80mph down a one-lane residential side-street.@MadeAliyah And yet you still haven’t addressed why you are OK with the government mandating how fast you can drive. Why is that any different from you claims of “govern my face”, “civil liberties”, and “power grab”? It’s something you are personally doing that the government is preventing!
@MadeAliyah There should be limits to government control but the government also has a right to excessive control when there is a clear and present danger. The COVID-19 pandemic was a case of clear and present danger. Speeding is a case of clear and present danger. The regular flu season is not. Driving 25 down a residential street is not. Simple as that.
@Health The videos and articles I referenced address the computer systems and the experts on the Lindell video. Why don’t you read and watch those before coming to any conclusions?
Why are you so insistent on calling everyone who doesn’t agree with you “liberal liar”? Last I checked, the only liars are those who claim something happened, but it didn’t. People like Donald Trump and Mike Lindell who claim that the election was stolen, but are in actuality simply lying.
@Health Welp, if the best thing Lindell has to offer in an entire two hours of video is something like the Jessy Jacob thing, I don’t have to watch it to know that it’s laughably inadequate in its attempts to prove that the election was stolen. The debunking article in “The Dispatch” takes all of about five minutes to read. It says that Lindell’s claims are almost all without any evidence. He alleges things like 296,589 ballots “demanding investigation” but doesn’t say where that number comes from. He claims that in Maricopa County in particular a lot of the ballot dates were from people who registered after the deadline, but didn’t realize that the registration deadlline had been extended.
You can keep bringing up claims and if they can be as easily debunked as these, I think it’s safe to say that there’s zero evidence that the election was stolen from Trump.
@MadeAliyah That’s a lot of words for addresses nothing about my main point. You keep trying to derail the topic by pretending that my concern about COVID is hypocritical because I’m not equally concerned about the flu, when I’ve already made myself clear that the two are not comparable.
You keep repeating “the burden of proof is on you” over and over again like it’s some massive shtuch and completely ignoring the fact that the proof is out there in what the CDC and Misrad HaBriyut have been saying. So the burden has shifted to you to prove them wrong.
Your main issue is that you don’t feel like the government (or my “power grab” whatever that means) has a right to mandate that you wear a mask, even if it does a lot to protect people. You have yet to address what, exactly, is the issue here since the government mandates things like that all the time, such as speed limits.
@Health The only reason (and I emphasis only) that I’m not watching Lindell’s video is because it’s two hours long and I simply don’t have the time. Why don’t you find the most damning ten minutes and tell me what they are? I’ll watch that. Alternatively, you can go on to yenner website, search “Lindell debunk” and watch the first two hours worth of videos that come up and then read “The Dispatch”‘s article on Lindell’s documentary.
If literally every individual and every piece of media that states “Biden won the election” is a “liberal democrat lie” as you claim, you’re going to have to make a very very good case as to why most of the world is a liar, but the small handful of individuals like Mike Lindell are somehow telling the truth.
I’ll admit, I was very skeptical of the theory that the virus had origins in the lab as a lot of the original reports came from some very questionable and inconsistent sources. But the latest batch of studies made me change my mind. That doesn’t mean I think it’s a bio-weapon that got loose. I just think that there’s a possibility that they were studying a natural virus, cross bred it with a different virus, and it accidentally got out.
@Health I didn’t remember Lindell’s name, but I knew him as “The MyPillow Guy”. He immediately started screaming “Fraud!” almost as soon as the elections started, and changed the story every time an allegation he made was proven false. That’s why I don’t trust him. And I certainly won’t waste my time watching a video he put together. If there are hard and convincing pieces of evidence in the video, then by all means say them. But you can’t win an argument by saying “Well you didn’t watch these three hours of video I linked to, so you have no case”.
@n0mesorah I think a better question would be which health department did not insist on masks. The US national DOH and all fifty states mandated masks as did the Misrad HaBriyut in Israel. If you’re going to say that you don’t need to wear a mask when around other people during a pandemic, you have to have some form of massive amounts of documentation to defend your position.
My point about the speeding moshol was to counter the idea that the government cannot mandate something against “personal liberties” (a concept I have issue with within itself). The government can and does mandate things like that all the time, especially when your expression of your “personal liberties” puts others at risk.
I am not sure if you are aware of this, but your stance has been repeatedly questioned. Now I wonder if you have a real position on the matter.
By whom? Three or four members of the CR? A couple nutters on YouTube? Some retired holistic medicine doctor dredged up from the depths of wherever? Like I’ve said before, the overwhelming vast majority of people who know what they are talking about have said that during a COVID-19 pandemic in an unvaccinated population, masks must be worn when around other people.
@torahvaluesoverparty You’re basically setting an extremely high bar for disproving fraud charges while setting an extremely low bar for proving them. There’s no way they would have had “full unobstructed access” to everything to your satisfaction, but what they have should be enough.
@Health I had to search a little to figure out what “The Lindel Documentary” even is. It’s something called “Absolute Proof” by a guy named Mike Lindell. Anyway, I don’t really trust Lindell. He’s changed his story multiple times about the alleged election fraud, I highly doubt his “documentary” has anything new to offer. And if he does offer some massive damning evidence, why didn’t you mention it as opposed to being hyper focused on Jessy Jacob? I’m not going to post a 500 page point-by-point rebuttal of the documentary (others have already and they are pretty good), so why don’t you just pick what claim you think is strongest and we’ll discuss that?@ujm There’s a Gemara in Nashim (I think Kesuvos or Gittin) regarding an amah m’shuchreres (freed maidservant). The Gemara asks about how she can get married right after receiving her shtar shichrur (freedom) when if she would become pregnant immediately it would be unclear if the baby was her husbands or one of the men she was with when she was allowed to as an amah. The Gemara answers that if she knew she would be free, she would use contraception.
That’s one place. I don’t recall anywhere where Chazal criticize goyim for choosing not to have a lot of children.
@n0mesorah By not wearing a mask during a pandemic you put others in danger since you could be contagious and spreading disease without your knowledge. That’s what the health departments have been saying since May 2020. Similarly, by speeding in a residential zone, you are putting others in danger as no one is crossing the street expecting someone to be doing 80 around the corner.
Dear @torahvaluesoverparty sigh I really thought you would live up to your username. I had a feeling that no matter how the audit would go, you would find something to nitpick at, like one or two inconsistencies that you will use as some sort of leverage to say the whole thing must be bad. There’s never a major investigation without a few hiccups and inconsistencies. If the whole thing came out clean as a whistle it would be even more suspicious.
It looks like, despite your comments about restoring confidence in the election, you had your mind made up before the votes were even in. Either Trump won, or the election was stolen. Like I said to @Health, to say that the election was stolen is an extraordinary claim and it would require extraordinary evidence for me to believe it. So far I haven’t even seen ordinary evidence. There isn’t even anything substantial enough to cast suspicion on the election, never mind actual evidence of fraud.
And I’m not sure what you’ve been reading, but even the Trump worshippers over at NewsMax haven’t reported much about the audit other than the few minor issues I hinted to earlier. Pretty much every other news source is either ignoring it (like FoxNews and other right wing sites) or laughing at the incompetence of the Cyber Ninjas.
@n0mesorah You don’t have to jump on cultural ideas, you merely have to look at the numbers. Fertility is down, but populations are growing at a faster rate than ever before. Because people are living longer and children aren’t dying as much as they used to.
@ujm People practicing birth control was very much a thing. It’s mentioned in several places in Shas and Rishonim. The difference today is that people don’t feel compelled to have 10-12 children as they can be sure that it’s unlikely to have so many children die before adulthood.@n0mesorah The sevara that @MadeAliyah is using is that you can’t force people to do things that have a chance of saving someone’s life because almost everything we do has a potential to harm another person. I disagree with his logic because not wearing masks presents a clear and present danger, like speeding in a residential zone.
Birth rates are a statistical misdirection. You need to look at population growth rates. And I believe that the population growth rate is growing. Like someone said earlier, back in the day most pregnancies would not result in an individual surviving until adulthood. So families these days have less babies simply because they aren’t afraid of them all dying.
Dear @torahvaluesoverparty Don’t start hocking with a different audit. You said very clearly that if the Maricopa audit doesn’t turn up anything substantial you will admit that there’s nothing to the claims of election fraud.
@MadeAliyah You literally addressed none of my comment. Why are speed limits not attacking your personal liberties? Why should masks have not be required? You just keep harping on this flu narischkeit, pretending that it’s as dangerous and infectious as COVID like it’s some sort of massive shtuch on the whole masking requirement. While you admit that masks saved lives, you still are dismissive of it and claim that it shouldn’t be required because of “personal liberties”. You can’t just ignore the pandemic, it actually happened and masks really worked to slow it down. What is “default position” anyway? Some dream where people can do whatever they want? Like drive over the speed limit?
the need to save lives does not always require me to take action
So let me get this straight. You admit that masks directly saved lives, perhaps even many lives. You admit that you wore a mask when required and it wasn’t that big of a deal. And that far less people would have died had everyone listened to the governments when they were requiring masks. And yet you still think that some nonsense called your “personal liberties” takes precedence? Where are your “personal liberties” when the Shiltoin HaKoifrim demands you pay taxes? Or those chauvanist Rabbis insist that women wear long sleeves in the summer?
@Health So what you are saying is that you have no evidence of voting fraud and nobody saw any fraud happening. So what is it exactly that has you so convinced that it happened? Because as far as I can tell, Biden won the election like 99% of the world has been saying. So unless you have some really strong evidence to suggest otherwise, I’m going to stick with what the evidence shows.
If you think Yeshiva Bachurim have never tried to find creative and ethically questionable ways to make money, you never knew any Yeshiva Bachurim.
Artscroll is for the hamon am, for people who aren’t necessarily talmidei chachamim and for light reading. Many years ago I used this example to differentiate Artscroll from Feldheim. The number one best selling Feldheim book was a five volume comprehensive guide to the 39 melachos of Shabbos in this day and age full of footnotes, references, and detailed examples. The best selling Artscroll book was a fancy cookbook.
How many people under the payroll of Republican leaning news organizations were found to have Neo-Nazi connections? Mr. Lauren Southern? Brietbart? FoxNews?
@MadeAliyah The “default position” flew out the window when there was something called a “global pandemic” and “millions literally dying”. At that point the “default position” became “whatever experts said that would help mitigate the situation”. The experts were near-unanimously saying that if most people wear masks, the deaths would drop significantly. So to contradict that, you would need a very VERY good reason.
You keep getting back to the flu and I keep having to explain myself again. I actually did a lot of thinking back when your first made your comparison and looked up some details and statistics. You’re right, there’s no good number for “acceptable losses”. Especially when something as simple as wearing a mask can prevent it.
But, and I repeat myself, according to the experts, (unless there’s a flu epidemic going around) wearing a mask is just overkill. You can prevent people from dying from the flu by just using some seichel. Like don’t go to the supermarket when you’re running a fever. Or don’t bring your sniffling sneezing kids to visit Saba at the nursing home.
So we’re getting back to our speed limit analogy. Experts have determined safe speeds on the streets. That will not prevent all vehicle deaths, because bad mazal will still happen. Changing the speed limit to 5 KPH (nimshol: wearing masks for the flu) everywhere won’t stop people from ramming their bikes into buses, or falling under a car wheel. So we have safe speed limits and I think we are both in agreement that those are there for a reason and it’s a darned good one. But then we get to your logic of “personal liberties” (a concept completely foreign to Yiddishkeit) which sounds like taking Libertarianism to the extreme (Randism?). The concept of a society that cannot prevent people from doing things that is a danger to others is just broken and wrong. So Israel, the US, and almost every non-Somalian country in the world saying that people have to drive the speed limit (nimshol: wear masks during the worst pandemic in a century) is the right thing to do.
What I don’t get is this. Rabbonim and Rebbetzins have been standing up in front of their kehal for generations and telling people how to dress. Especially women. Often that way of dress is extremely difficult and uncomfortable. So why when it came to telling kehillos to wear masks did a lot of people balk and say “You can’t tell me what to do!”.
@Health Clearly Republicans can be fooled easily else we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Like you’re still convinced of something despite there being a near-total lack of evidence for it.
I’ve said it before, out of all the election judges, workers, watchers, etc. the strongest evidence is witnesses are a woman who was literally drunk and belligerent when testifying under oath and Jessy Jacob who couldn’t even give a time and date for what she thinks she saw. If that’s enough to convince you, then I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
I think it’s only a matter of time before the Republican base also turns against Israel. I think we should stop relying on the government for our protection and go back to having emunah and bitachon while we remember that we are still in galus and this gift that Hashem gave us of the State of Israel can be ripped away from us at any time.
@MadeAliyah We’ve already been through this. The speed limit should be low enough that the only way to cause loss of life is by sheer recklessness or extremely unlikely situations which no amount of laws (except those saying no leaving the home no matter what) can prevent. Getting rid of the speed limit because of “personal rights” would cause a massive increase in hospitalizations and deaths.
And no, the burden of proof is still on you since pretty much everyone who is knowledgeable about the subject says that wearing masks saved lives when COVID is rampant and people are unvaccinated. I can’t post links on YWN, but you can check the CDC or Misrad HaBriyut website yourself for proof.
So nu? Why didn’t you wear a mask before you were vaccinated (assuming you were vaccinated)? After all, the evidence and proof does say that it protects people?
@Health The specific thing you mentioned about changing ballot dates was her not understanding how the system works and ignorance of what she was being asked to do. So again, extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence. A claim that can’t even be admissible to court isn’t even ordinary evidence, it’s literally nothing.
@Health You’re just posting the same Jessy Jacob article that we’ve already discussed. Turns out, not only could she not identify a single specific example of voter intimidation, but she was also clueless about how the balloting system even worked and a lot of her claims were her not understanding what was happening.
That’s why I don’t trust the NewsMax version of this story. Their only mentions of Ms. Jacob was her initial accusations from December 2020. They never posted any followups, like her ignorance, or how she couldn’t state any specifics. They’re currently trying to bury the story by pretending that it never happened. Fortunately, a quick Google search brings up dozens of articles about her.
@Health I have one screen name on this site, I think? Maybe I accidentally created another? I dunno.
Anyhoo, none of what you said is evidence. The lawsuits, as I mentioned, all just said vague statements that there may have been tampering, but no one can confirm. Not one shred of evidence strong enough to even be admissible to court has been proven.
@coffee-addict I believe those two fringe anti-evolution scientists not because they are the smartest or have the greatest reasoning, but because I have emunah in Hashem and His Torah. Are you saying that you believe NewsMax only because you have emunah in Trump?@Health Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And your claims are pretty extraordinary. And your evidence is pretty… let’s say… less than extraordinary.