@torahvaluesoverparty @Gadolhatorah

I mentioned this in another thread, but HCQ+Zinc has been tried in numerous studies on numerous types of patients. Unfortunately, the results only show a moderate improvement. I think the best result was that there was 1/20 less patients hospitalized. Many doctors and hospitals, notably the Henry Ford Institute in Detroit, have been using HCQ+Zinc as part of a regimen of drugs to treat COVID.

All this goes to show is that the best response to COVID is teffila and bein adam l’chaveiro. There’s no cure, there’s only prevention and Hashem. The best prevention is to assume that you have the virus and try not to go near people without protection on yourself,, and the best cure is to daven to bring Moshiach.

@chan56 I understand that you and others are having a lot of difficulty with masks. It really is hard wearing fabric over your mouth and nose for hours on end. But please please understand the importance of it. It’s not some “Democrat conspiracy”, there really is value in wearing a mask. Even if you can save one life, isn’t that worth the hours of discomfort? And if the discomfort is too much, maybe don’t go out.

The number one misconception about masks is probably that it’s meant to keep you safe. No. It helps, but the reason wearing a mask is important is that it keeps other people safe. A person with COVID-19 is much less likely to infect others if the sick person has a mask on.

I don’t think we read the same article. Please look for the article titled “Masks Work. Really. We’ll Show You How”. It makes a very clear point that I’ll explain. COVID-19 travels in droplets that come mostly from people’s mouth and nose. Studies have shown that almost all COVID-19 infections were caused from breathing in droplets. If someone wears a mask, they expel something like 95% less droplets and they don’t travel as far. You are right. It’s not 100% effective, but it’s 95% effective. Meaning, if there’s a sick person in a crowded room without a mask, it’s almost certain that multiple people will be infected. But if they were wearing a mask, they will infect 95% less people.

There was little data in March and April but since then we’ve Baruch Hashem come a long way. Nature.com has an article titled “Face masks: what the data say” which collects a lot of the various studies that show the effectiveness of masks in prevented COVID-19 from spreading.

Without any precautions, the virus has what’s called an infection rate of 3. Which means that everyone infects on average three people. (by comparison, a flu has an infection rate of 1.7). Those three people infect three more and so on and so forth. After a week there is a possibility of thousands of infections. We saw that in April where one man at a Bas Mitzvah managed to cause a massive outbreak in New York City.

But with precautions, such as masks and social distancing, we can bring that down to an infection rate of 1 or less. Meaning that if someone has COVID, they will infect an average of one person. After a week, instead of thousands there will be only seven new cases. So it’s not 100% effective, but it’s effective enough.

People not wearing masks make me anxious in the same way that people walking around with loaded guns and their fingers on the trigger make me anxious. It’s easier to ask people to wear masks than to ask people who care about COVID-19 to avoid the Corona Kofrim who don’t care about people getting sick and dying.

@chan56 The NY Times article @Effi references is titled “Masks Work. Really. We’ll Show You How” Google that phrase and the interactive article is the first hit.

I don’t know about operating rooms, but dentists, ObGyns and many other doctors in non-surgical settings wear masks for hours on end without special training or oxygenation.

Can you point to some research that shows the damages that wearing masks does? People on here keep referencing it, but I have a hard time finding anything other than shadey YouTube videos. I am very interested in this topic and what the results of the studies are. My shul enforced mask wearing the entire Yom Kippur and there were people from ages 12 to 75 who davened (while fasting!) Shacharis through Mussaf for close to four hours straight wearing a mask the entire time. I wonder what health issues they encountered while doing that and whether I should tell them to go see a doctor to check for low oxygenated blood.

@syag-lchochma I don’t want to name the Yeshiva, but it really and truly happened and it was absolutely terrifying. They took precautions to try and keep everyone from leaving and guests from coming in with the understanding that they could not make all the boys social distance and wear masks all the time (dining room, dorms, etc.). But unfortunately there were a few “leaks”. One of those leaks was a guy who went home on Friday afternoon before Rosh Hashono, then one of his parents felt sick over Shabbos and a few days later so did he. They sent him home immediately but almost right away his roomates and chavrusas tested positive. After a few days there were people falling ill in the Yeshiva, by Yom Kippur they were forced into full lockdown and had a special run for tests which was 75% positive. By the time Succos rolled around, people were already saying tehillim for one Rebbi, and at least two other Rebbeim were hospitalized with less severe symptoms. Even as late as yesterday, there was a tehillim call for the Mashkiach’s wife who has been in serious condition for weeks.

@torahvaluesoverparty The main study I was referencing is available on PubMed through the website of the NIH. Google the author’s names and nothing else and you should find it. A very similar study is also available on the Henry Ford Institute’s website.

how do you explain the media’s inability to point out obvious flaws in the studies discrediting HQC?

You know what, you’re somewhat right. There is a bit of suppression going on. I believe that it’s all part of the massive effort media companies are doing to try and stop misinformation. There is a ton of HCQ+Zinc misinformation out there with people calling it a miracle drug and stuff, so the media is suppressing it and only focusing on studies that show its ineffectiveness.

You know what? I agree with them. To extend your plane moshul, if someone picked up a loudspeaker and started talking about how it’s OK to take a hammer to the plane’s innards because there are enough parachutes for everyone, no one would argue against taking the megaphone away.

I can’t speak for the cancer medicines you mentioned, but for HCQ+Zinc there’s really only anecdotal evidence that it’s more than moderately effective. There were a few doctors back in March and April that treated a lot of people with this regimen, but they were working without hard data as to who had the virus and who didn’t and they didn’t publish the breakdown on exactly how many people were ill. These things are absolutely necessary to prove the effectiveness of a drug. You can’t just say “Well it may work, so let’s just give it to everyone”.

Trump did much better this time around. Biden did much worse. It was far more balanced than the previous debate which means that no one is really changing their minds.

@torahvaluesoverparty That’s interesting that the WHO says lockdowns don’t work. I can’t seem to find anything about it online first hand, can you write a bit more about it? Does the CDC agree?

I’m not sure what you mean by “hardly science to that”. I’ve seen numerous reports that COVID-19 positive people who wear masks are far less likely to spread the disease. And more studies that show how communities where most people are masked and socially distant have almost no internal disease transmission.

Again, I’m not a doctor but I’ll try and explain as best as I can. The first study I mentioned is the clearest. Two doctors read about how HCQ+Zinc was being used to treat mild symptoms in outpatient settings in NY, France, and China so they decided to test the hypothesis. They gave the drug cocktail to a group of people who were showing mild COVID-19 symptoms and a placebo to another group with similar symptoms. The results were that of those who took the HCQ+Zinc slightly less ended up dead or in the hospital.

This is important in two ways. One is that HCQ+Zinc can be added to the list of potential drugs, like Remedisvir and Regeneron, that help with COVID-19. Another is that it illustrates that it’s still not a miracle drug. It only helps with COVID, and certainly doesn’t cure it outright.

As far as I can tell, the idea that it’s being “repressed” in the media is anti-Semitic fake. All double blind peer review published studies are out there and being discussed. Unfortunately, the studies aren’t as optimistic as the original experiments.

@torahvaluesoverparty I was referring to outpatient. The only studies with HCQ on asymptomatic people show a small decrease in hospitalization and death. A small decrease. In other words, it’s not enough to call it a wonder drug and certainly not enough to justify ignoring COVID social distancing and mask regulations.

There have been some informal and anecdotal thingies, but those are certainly not reliable. A doctor who claims to have treated 1000 people and only one hospitalization is probably because only 10% of those people actually had COVID-19.

HCQ + Zinc may work or it may not, there is too much information and I don’t have the head to sift through it right now. The strange thing is, that’s not important. The studies and information I have read show that it only marginally increases the possibility of a COVID-19 patient surviving. Surviving! Is that what we should be striving for? Why can’t we try and keep people out of hospitals to begin with instead of making sure that one out of twenty who would have otherwise died, instead merely suffers from potential lifelong breathing problems?

Yes. They don’t care what your health record is, since it’s too easy to fake and reinfection is a thing.

Even if you can skirt the regulations by traveling via Canada or something, you shouldn’t. The bidud guidelines are there for a reason and that reason is to protect people from getting a dangerous virus from people who aren’t being careful and spreading it around.

It is unlikely that the mitzva of pidyun shvuyim applies to a person who was imprisoned for knowingly violating multiple laws solely for their own gain and possibly giving dangerous information to enemies.

The gemara in Kesuvos says “הכל בידי שמים חוץ מצינים פחים ” – “Everything is from Shomayim except for cold sickness and heat sickness”. The מפורשים explain that it means that if you slept with a window open on a freezing night and wake up with pneumonia, the fault is on you.

Tehillim rallies are nice, but an ounce prevention combined with a pinch of סכל a dash of השתדלות would go a lot further to help our situation.

@syag-lchochma I don’t appreciate the sarcasm. I thought we were having a good discussion before sorry that you had to get nasty. I’m sorry I wasn’t being clear before that the purpose of everything all the guidelines and personal responsibilities is so that we don’t have to shut down like we did in April. Masks and social distancing is important both because they allow us to continue with our regular lives without infecting people and putting them in the hospital and to allow sick and elderly people to be able to go out.

I think we need to measure how many people are affected by mental illness vs. how many people are affected by coronavirus. Like, locking everything down such as we did in April will lead to more mental difficulties. Opening everything up like it was 2019 will lead to C”V thousands of hospitalizations, permanent lung damage, and even deaths. We have to find ways to keep things open while keeping people from getting infected. That is why the CDC guidelines are so important. If a kid wants to play at his friends house, they can both wear masks, stand apart, and wash their hands. If you want shul to be open, you can have a parallel minyan in the parking lot, Purell stations, and mandatory masks. That way we don’t have to worry about the social problems nor the debilitating health problems COVID-19 brings.

I’m not a Trumpkopf, but I feel like this was super misrepresented. If you hear the whole conversation it goes something like this:

Moderator: Why don’t you tell white supremacists to stand down?

Trump: Which ones? Give me a name.

M: The Proud Boys.

T: OK. Stand down. Stand by.

Read the recent “Open Letter” from Rabbi Avi Shafran (spokesperson of the Agudah) co-signed by several Rabbonim. There’s no mitzva to vote for Trump. And to think that he’s so much better than Biden because of his position on Israel is misguided at best, and a dangerous precedent at worst.

I have no interest in voting a Red menuval or a Blue shoteh as President. However, I can see that people like Biden’s opinions on publicly funded programs that can help many Yeshivos and yungerleit who rely on the government for their healthcare and basic welfare. Very similar to Trump’s position when he ran for president in 2000.

@Milhouse What teshuva did Reb Moshe say that? The one I saw he calls it “similar to murder” but doesn’t actually call it murder, and still says that it’s necessary at times so the oilom shouldn’t follow the X-tian right wing and ban all clinics.

What does the Moetzes say about your side, since they are very clearly not anti-abortion?

@Reb-Eliezer Sorry, can you be a little more clear? I don’t think we are allowed to paskin from a pasuk like that, though I may be wrong. Is the Maharsha giving a psak halacha l’meisah? Does he say if there’s a difference in how far along the baby is? I seem to recall a gemara that states that there’s an early period of time where the fetus isn’t considered alive.

@milhouse @rational @motcha11 @Reb-Eliezer

I usually trust @charliehall’s opinions on matters of politics and halacha, since he is a well known expert and talmid chacham. But I’m wondering what the other tzad is. My understanding is that the current “conservative” approach to abortion is based on Catholic ideology which is much more machmire than frum halacha.

How do your poskim, like the Tzitz Eliezer, shtim with Rav Moshe Feinstein’s famous teshuva on abortion clinics? Or the more recent lobbying of the Agudah (presumably with the guidance of the Moetzes)?

@refoelzeev I don’t believe that’s 100% true. It may be more chamur for a goy, but I’m pretty sure under certain circumstances at certain times it’s still allowed.

For all those here saying that abortions are murder, the reality of halacha is a lot more complex. Rav Moshe spoke about the issue as did many Rabbonim after him. For a recent example, the American X-tian right wing lobbies supported the Iowa so-called “Heartbeat Bill”. In contrast, the Agudah, with the guidance of the Moetzes, put out a public statement calling it against the Torah.

@Health That’s really hard to hear. I feel comforted, as I’m sure do you, when I walk into shul and see everyone wearing masks. Seeing that I know that even if someone chas v’Shalom, is sick (with or without showing symptoms) it’s very unlikely they will get me sick. Ignorant people walking around without masks make me nervous, how many people could they unknowingly infect? It’s horrible! And like you said before, sure there’s medicine to treat it, but why should we have to rely on getting hospitalized when there’s a perfectly cheap, safe, reasonable, and more effective method?

@n0mesorah People don’t like having their reality questioned. If they decide not to wear a mask, they are afraid when they hear the reality that they are a danger to others. So they attack.

@Health

I feel terrible about that. There are so many people so sick that they can’t wear masks? Why davka Lakewood? Is there a lot of asthmatic people there?

I mean, considering Lakewood Rabbonim hold that people should follow the advice of Dr. Shanick and wear masks indoors, this must be something serious if so many unhealthy people who cannot wear masks are being forced to leave their homes in the midst of a pandemic!

Just last week we heard stories of previously healthy people who are now gravely ill due to catching COVID-19. Baruch Hashem it seems we will not have a repeat of six months ago will nebech so many meisim. Hashem has given doctors the knowledge how to treat most patients.

But we still have to be vigilant shomrim and make sure we keep our distance and wear masks! We never know if we may have COVID and so we should try as hard as possible to make sure people around us don’t C”V end up in the hospital medicated.

הכל בידי שמים חוץ מצינים פחים

Everything comes from Hashem. But if we aren’t watching our own health and the health of our chaveirim, then the sickness comes from the hands of Man.