This is Ellie Bennett, your neighborhood doctor. (May 7, 2020)
I’m not a politician. I am not a government official. I’m not a Rabbi. I have no sway on when the economy (or shuls) reopen. My one and ONLY concern is the safety of my family, friends and neighbors.
Initial predictions were over a hundred thousand deaths. I truly believe that would have been a reality if not for the social distancing that people have adopted and adhered to.
I do believe we have turned a corner here in New York. Hospital admissions are down. And the number of deaths are declining each day. Let us pray that continues.
I wish I could unsee many events from the last few weeks. I’ve watched 30 year old’s come to my ER and die within hours. I have said viduy (confession) with virtual strangers and watched them struggle with their last breath – all alone with nobody at the bedside other than myself and the nurse.
I’ve witnessed friends and neighbors die, while helplessly looking on. We have buried the best of the best of our community, including my Rebbe, Rabbi Leibel Katz, Rabbi Matis Blum, Dr. Eli Landau and so many other wonderful people.
I’ve had episodes of uncontrollable sobbing – enough times that my family and office staff were worried that I was having an emotional breakdown.
I’ve also seen amazing things. Communities have come together to arrange food deliveries for people unable to get out. We’ve gotten oxygen to those sickest of patients and allowed them to stay home- and survive. Hatzalah, Shomrim, Amudim and other organizations have stepped up and met the challenge head on. I’m privileged to be part of the medical community that has persevered, despite emotional and physical hurdles.
But over the last week I’ve seen people become complacent.
People that have been so amazing are almost justifiably tired of quarantine, and becoming lax.
This past weekend I witnessed families getting together for barbecues and kids playing outside together. Porch minyamin are cropping up. Scores of people in the grocery stores not following the accepted social distancing guidelines.
This is astonishing to me. We CANNOT have such short memories.
We cannot forget those who have perished in this plague- nor the critical steps we all took that have prevented scores of others from the very same fate.
The government WILL reopen our economy. It must happen for other aspects of our lives to continue. The arguments for and against is not the purpose of me writing to you to today.
We can and we must continue social distancing until the infectious disease experts we all relied upon tell us the time has come to stop.
The only way we are going to safely get our lives back to some semblance of normalcy is for people to follow the rules. Social distancing CAN and MUST continue for the foreseeable future. Even more so when we reopen up our shuls. The very essence of our community is our closeness & social interactions. It makes us unique & special. But according to the experts that closeness is exactly why and how so many of our brothers & sisters got sick to begin with. We must stay vigilant & socially distance ourselves. Lives depend on it.
And what about those over 60 who so carefully isolated themselves and didn’t get sick. On the one hand, B”H they are healthy and well. On the other hand, because they never contracted the virus they presumably have no antibodies. (If that even confers immunity, as nobody is sure at this point)
This means that hundreds of our neighbors, friends, and parents don’t have any antibodies. They are exactly in the same vulnerable position they were 9 weeks ago and could contract the fatal Coronavirus in a split second. The wrong interaction. The supermarket. The subway. Even the park. Any random encounter could prove fatal.
We are not out of the woods yet. And if anything, we are possibly in a more dangerous time, because unlike before when everyone was terrified, people are prematurely letting down their guard.
Don’t become a statistic or a name on a Tehillim group.
Common sense and recent history guides us to continue our extreme vigilance.
This community has lost some if it’s most special people, haven’t we all cried enough?
Please be safe.Please be careful. I’m begging you.
Edward (Ellie) Bennett, MD
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
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12 Responses
So… does this mean camps and bungalow colonies should or shouldn’t…can a medical expert weigh in on this????
I’ve been assured that learning Torah protects, and nothing protects better than learning Torah. Yet I see no mention of that in this article. Is this a frum site?
Dr. im not sure where your coming from. the federal guidelines said after 2 weeks of declining hospital admissions the economy can start to open. its pretty clear that we have way more than 2 weeks. hospitals are empty. i or anyone i know haven’t heard of a new case in weeks. so yes its time we get back to normal if someone is over 65 and want to stay home let them but why torture the young people? even if we get it again so what we’ll get better. life has to go on and the time for that is now BH corona is gone i dont need professionals to tell me when its gone i can see with my own 2 eyes
I want to hug this guy! Every Jewish life that will be saved because of him is his zchus!
Thank you for the chizuk! Well said!
Yes, this. Very disturbing. Short memories. For the first time last week, suddenly I saw neighbors sneaking in their entire extended families for Shabbos; multiple adult offspring with brigades of small children, parking elsewhere to not draw attention to the children’s vehicles. People as of this week not wearing masks in grocery stores, standing mere inches apart, as if the friends and relatives who were gravely ill last week, are suddenly ALL better this week. Why are we being willfully ignorant? We’re all impatient. We’re all bored. But to endanger our friends and neighbors? This isn’t about the economy; this is because people simply can’t live without having the Mispocha over for Shabbos, or holding Minyonim, when our Gedolim have asked of us the very opposite.
Dr. Bennett-Be gebensht!!!!
Thank you Dr Bennett for your well-expressed thoughts. Let us hope that we’re closer to the end of this madness, and your concerns will slowly fade as we evolve slowly towards normalcy
Dr. Bennett, Kew Gardens Hills is proud to call you one of our own! thanks for all your dedication to the neighborhood and beyond.
a few questions for dr. its now more than 3 weeks since sunday erev yom tov , when bp.. had begun to relax “social distance” w/ last minute shopping… than yomtov with minyan every block .. kids all over… than even more since yomtov yet there has been zero uptick in NEW CASES , I followed the hatzoloh scanner… and checked shomrei hadas each day and mamonodies ER is so quiet that they begun RENOVATIONS. what do u make of it?
to be honest the mageifa was devastating but the dire predictions you & so many others made were way off, (socail distance included) javitz & the boat were practically empty, majority of big hospital tents were barely opened , DR ditcheks 10,000 vents also was above the actual need..
finally the frum tri state lost approx 850 precious yidden i’ve noticed that an unusual percentage were exceptional people as you mentioned (rav katz zaz”l .. rav blum) it seems totaly disproportionate so many chashuvim from a sample of 850 loking foward to hear your thoughts
While I can appreciate his heartfelt plea, how did you happen to witness so much activity? Were you policing the neighborhood? I think it may be worth noting that focus should be kept on protecting the most vulnerable in the population, namely the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions or compromised immunity,, and let the rest of the population return to more normal.
We can and we must continue social distancing until the infectious disease experts we all relied upon tell us the time has come to stop.
Since we now know we should never have relied on them, why should we continue to do so? What we should all have learned by now is that “experts” often don’t know any more than we do. And that modelling is junk science.
This means that hundreds of our neighbors, friends, and parents don’t have any antibodies. They are exactly in the same vulnerable position they were 9 weeks ago and could contract the fatal Coronavirus in a split second.
And what do you think will change in a month, or 3 months, or 6 months? Whenever we open up, those who were not infected will become infected, unless we keep them isolated until a vaccine is ready for use. So why wait to do that? Do it now, and let the rest of us go back to normal lives, which we should never have stopped.