By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com
A number of people are aware of the controversy about an health clinic in Williamsburg that started giving out COVID-19 vaccines to people other than the front-line health care workers. Indeed, such prominent Poskim as Rabbi Herschel Schachter and Rabbi Mordechai Willig received vaccinations from that organization as well. Rabbi Schachter even issued a statement that had he known that the origin of the vaccine was under question he would not have taken the vaccine.
What follows is an observation that has nothing to do with the details of this case, per se. It is an observation that the policy that has been adopted by the CDC as to who should be vaccinated first – is, in this author’s opinion, morally and halachically bankrupt. If one carefully examines the mission statement of the CDC – one will see that the raison d’etre of the CDC is to maximize the saving of life. Lehavdil, the parameters of halacha are also to maximize the saving of life.
On December 3rd, the CDC made recommendations to the three governments throughout the nation – the federal government, the state governments and the local governments about who should be vaccinated first (Phase 1A recipients). These recommendations were based on those made by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an independent panel of medical and public health experts.
The three thoughts this author would like to share are as follows:
- The recommendations are wrong.
- They will kill many thousands, if not tens of thousands of people if not more.
- There is still time to change them.
The criterion as to who should be vaccinated first should be made solely with one factor in mind – to maximize the saving of life. This means if option A will save 800,000 lives and the option that the CDC has chosen will save 300,000 lives then the policy is responsible for the death of a half a million people. Those most at risk for dying should receive the vaccine first – this should be the only criterion.
The CDC stated that their recommendations were made with these goals in mind:
- Decrease death and serious disease as much as possible.
- Preserve functioning of society.
- Reduce the extra burden COVID-19 is having on people already facing disparities.
The problem is that goal #2, and goal #3 undermine goal number one. The scandal that has happened in Brooklyn should be a call to the real scandal that is happening. It should be a clarion call to all doctors, presidents, clergymen and everyone that values life to change the criterion.
Currently, healthcare personnel and residents of long-term care facilities are offered the first doses of COVID-19 vaccines (Phase 1a). Healthcare personnel are less at-risk for dying of COVID-19. This decision will cause many thousands of deaths. True, the healthcare workers are heroes and they will be discussed later in this article. But, once again, those most at risk for dying should receive the vaccine first. That is it.
On December 22nd, the CDC made recommendations as two who should be included in Phases 1b and 1c.
1b will include frontline essential workers such as:
- fire fighters
- police officers
- corrections officers
- food and agricultural workers
- United States Postal Service workers
- manufacturing workers
- grocery store workers
- public transit workers
- those who work in the educational sector (teachers, support staff, and daycare workers.)
Really? What madness has entered the minds of the people making such decisions? The emperor has no clothes. Who are they to place value on one life versus the other? Trauma centers are designed to triage. Who made this decisions and why is this not the scandal of the century? Has the entire world gone stark raving mad??
Where is the media? Where are the doctors?
Yes, true, in the1b phase, the CDC recommendations include people aged 75 years and older because they are at high risk of hospitalization, illness, and death from COVID-19. People aged 75 years and older who are also residents of long-term care facilities should be offered vaccination in Phase 1a.
In Phase 1c, the CDC includes people aged 65—74 years “because they are at high risk of hospitalization, illness, and death from COVID-19. People aged 65—74 years who are also residents of long-term care facilities should be offered vaccination in Phase 1a.”
In 1c, the CDC includes people aged 16—64 years with underlying medical conditions which increase the risk of serious, life-threatening complications from COVID-19.
Again, a grave error that will cause tens of thousands of deaths if not more. This group should have been included in 1a.
Who else is in 1C? They are other essential workers, such as
- people who work in transportation and logistics,
- food service,
- housing construction and finance,
- information technology,
- communications,
- energy,
- law,
- media,
- public safety
- public health.
This is sheer madness, and actually a murderous, illegal, immoral policy. We have thrown out all the logic of triaging and have adopted politically correct notions in who shall live or who shall die. If ever there was a time for President trump to step in and stop this murderous rampage he should do so now. It will be his greatest legacy.
The argument has been made that healthcare workers should receive it first because otherwise no one will be there to help those who are sick. This is actually, not true. Our healthcare workers are true heroes. As someone who witnessed them firsthand in the hospital, I questioned then and most did not have it. They are the real heroes of COVID-19 and would do it anyway. We are under-estimating the nature and character of our nurses and healthcare workers. And by doing so, we have adopted a policy that will kill untold tens of thousands.
The CDC must not forget the words of the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Let’s go back to that first of the three – Life. Life comes before all. The CDC in this murderous, politically correct policy is depriving Americans of their inalienable rights – the right to live. This policy must be changed. We are murdering our fellow Americans.
It is this author’s view that it is our moral duty to point out this moral and ethical failure of the CDC and get it changed as soon as possible. Doctors, clergymen, public policy politicians – where are you?
The author can be reached at [email protected]. The author hopes to add marei mekomos later on.
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37 Responses
The basic premise of the article – that the CDC recommendations should not be policy – is true.
The implication that this justifies the flouting of policy by certain organizations is false.
If anything, this article compounds the Chilul Hashem aspect of the story. It’s easy to point to this article as evidence that “the Jews ignore the law and think they know better than everyone else.”
We should fight the policy, but only through legal means.
Beautifully stated!
B’mchilas Kvod HaRav, I disagree with your analysis. Preserving life is obviously the top priority, but there are indirect dangers to life that come from the inability of society to function normally. A specific example that I’m personally aware of is people avoiding going to the doctor for non-COVID issues due to the risk of exposure – and therefore not having another, life-threatening, condition diagnosed when it was at a treatable stage. As to your comment that medical workers having continued to work even at risk to their own health – as a medical worker, I might do so when I know that that’s the only option. I can assure you that my motivation to do so would go down significantly if I knew I could protect myself (and my family, since they’re exposed to me…), but the government decided that someone else was more important.
There are arguments that can be made in favor of this or that group, and you represent one approach. While I may not agree with the CDC’s approach, it is not unreasonable, given the situation at hand.
Respectfully,
an Israeli Yid
As insane as this list of essential workers is, the only non-insane thing of this list is that politicians are not on it, hence:- Why did politicians bypass this list and already get vaccinated?
They also need to be held accountable for having broken the law.
Carrion call” should be “clarion call”. Carrion is decaying flesh of dead animals . Yes, I know, picky, picky, picky. If English is here the preferred language for communication, it should at least be used correctly.
This is dangerous if not deadly junk science. Many healthcare facilities have had to limit operations because their staff were coming down with COVID. Three thousand healthcare workers in the US alone have died from the pandemic. If this isn’t contained, the death toll will explode.
What is morally bankrupt is noit protecting our healthcare workers who are risking their lives to save people from this deadly pandemic. And this after our government actively prevented them from getting proper personal protective equipment!
I am usually not one to blast rabbis but I have rarely seen such an irresponsible statement. He is a hypocrite for praising healthcare workers but calling for the denial of the protection they need to help us. Woe to whoever tried to teach him Torah without Derech Eretz.
The rabbi is 100% wrong. If healthcare workers become ill, as many have, hospitals are understaffed and more patients will die! The data indicates that when hospital workers contract Covid-19 they generally become sicker because they are exposed to high concentrations of viral particles.
Very very well said. And to comment number one your wrong. Dead wrong. (Pun intended). We don’t follow dina dmalchusa when it’s morally wrong and against the Torah. Maybe have another look at the Holocaust and tell me why it was ok to light the menorah or bake matza in auchwitz when it was “illegal”. Our allegiance is to the Torah. Period. Dina dmalchusa is a sugya that you obviously know nothing about
Governor DeSantis of Florida (who is in his low 40s) did not take the vaccine because we should “allocate the vaccine based on vulnerability.”
It’s clarion call, not carrion call.
Why is it a Chilul Hashem R”L
We are to follow the Torah even if its against the law (if it contradicts)
its a Kiddish Hashem and we always end being right
There is a certain logic in having SOME of the primary front line health workers vaccinated first.
These people treat hundreds of other patients regularly. Though they may not personally be at risk for death, there are two indirect threats to life that result if they are infected:
1) If they do not realize they are infected they are more likely to inadvertently pass it on to more than one high risk individual than other populations are.
2) If they do know they are infected they will need to stop working temporarily and their absence can create more of a strain on the remaining medical staff causing a lowering of the quality of care many patients will receive.
Whether this slightly more indirect threat to more people outweighs the more direct threat to fewer people or not is a decision that should be made by Torah Giants.
Regardless, the young and healthy postal workers should definitely wait.
I hear where the author is coming from.
However, let’s look at bari ve-shehma as it could apply to doctors and nurses.
In the last seven days (ending yesterday) there were 1,317,150 newly diagnosed cases of Covid 19 in the USA. There are about 4,000,000 active doctors and nurses in the USA. If each new case interacts only once with just one MD or RN, these healthcare workers will (BARI) certainly interact with 3.25 active ill contagious patients. Of course there is more that one interaction per patient and more that one healthcare worker interacts with each patient.
On the other hand, how many definite contagious people does the average reader encounter? Whatever the number it is only a possible contagious person (“SHEHMA”).
Additionally, the medical people put themselves in sakana dealing with contagious patients and they do so to save lives. How many of the people are negligent in their behavior and contract the virus?
Do we want to put people who are negligent, careless or without mazal before people who are working to save lives?
Bari v’Shehma – Bari Adif.
The author seems to believe that the recommendation to give healthcare workers first is some kind of reward for their hard work. This is not the case.
People have pointed out that if healthcare workers are sick, then hospitals will be understaffed and more patients will die indirectly. Another point is that healthcare workers are also those who can most easily inadvertently spread the virus before realizing it, since they work with many very sick people. By protecting them, we save many more lives.
Similarly, vaccinating workers in old-age homes is important in ensuring not only their health, but the health of all residents.
If the goal is to minimize total lives lost, which seems reasonable, then one way in which that can happen is by making sure that those most likely to spread it cannot spread it by becoming breading grounds for the virus. This is the reason for treating teachers, food-workers, etc with priority. Not because we believe their lives are more valuable, and not because we want to reward them, but because we davka want to minimize lives lost. I hope the author will reassess his beliefs.
Frum ER nurse here. I am currently recovering from COVID which i got from my job. My currently understaffed hospital has been even more understaffed due to my absence. I am young and healthy with no preexisting conditions., I had double pneumonia and was very sick and admitted to the hospital. It’s been a month and I am still not fully recovered. It is a known fact that healthcare providers receive higher viral loads and therefore get sicker from COVID than your average citizen. Not vaccinating health care providers first would be a crime. If we are all sick who do you think will take care of you when you get sick. Additionally not all healthcare workers are young and healthy, many of us are middle aged or older and have preexisting conditions. I hear your argument but respectfully disagree.
Also, when I found I was positive, I was initially asymptomatic and at work, and even though I was wearing a mask and PPE could have very well exposed several high risk patients (including someone going for emergency cardiac surgery) unknowingly. Just another reason for healthcare providers to be vaccinated first.
The elderly and high risk should stay home while the essential workers need to remain out and about in order to allow those that need to remain home to stay home. This way the essential workers won’t pass th virus to those staying home. There are less essential workers than high risk individuals so vaccinating high risk and elderly first would be too many. Healthcare workers have been risking their own health and safety and have big potential to spread the virus. I don’t agree that essential workers should go before healthcare workers in the community
Cbb reading XD
Suppose there are multiple fires springing up all around the city. A fire also springs up in the fire station, hospital and the main food storage warehouse of the country. Who gets priority fire service? Saving the fire station will save many houses, saving the hospital will save many people and saving the food supply will save society from breaking down. Do you get the message?!
There needs to be some sort of change. I am a young healthcare student who has already recovered from COVID-19 and I can get the vaccine before my 85 y/o grandma. Something is wrong here,
Rabbi Hoffman שליט”א, with the greatest respect, מחילה עשית תורתך הערמה. The Almighty puts wisdom into the hearts of the leaders of nations, and in this case they are correct. I will give you yet another example, in addition to what others have written here. My wife is a special ed teacher in Israel. When the government decided to reopen the schools, we were faced with a choice between endangering our own lives and the lives of our family, including my elder father עמו”ש, or abandoning the special children in the class and losing our family’s livelihood. After consulting with an Odom Godol we chose the first path. I have no claim to mesiras nefesh – we were forced to do it. Some teachers and family members lost their lives because of this. But now that the vaccine is available, if the government had not announced that all teachers will receive the vaccine starting later this week, the teachers’ union would have declared a strike. Which one would cause more lives to be lost? Who would live and who would die? Only the Almighty knows. But you cannot force millions of people to risk their lives to keep their jobs. They won’t do it – they will revolt. The vaccines cannot save lives if the healthcare system and the entire economy around it collapses. Everyone who wants the vaccine will still get it, and soon. But the distribution must be done with deeper wisdom, not just a simplistic calculation of infection percentages.
TOTLLY MASKIM – why are people over 60 not in phase 1a or at least 1b??? yes the medical workers are also top priority bc they need to properly do their jobs saving lives without being scared to get to close to patients, but besides that the seniors should be getting first dibs!! the rest of the people in 1b should not be getting before our 60 year old citizens and certainly not before our 65 year olds!
Rabbi Hoffman שליט”א, continuing my previous post: Yosef HaTzadik was charged with distributing a life-giving commodity to the entire population of the greatest nation in the world. Why did the entire nation cooperate, follow his instructions, give him everything they owned, give up their livelihoods, and in the end declare with gratitude “You have kept us alive, we are hereby slaves to Par’oah”? Why did they not revolt and loot the storehouses to save their own lives? No army could have stopped them. Egypt would have been ruined, and multitudes would have died. Yosef HaTzadik needed tremendous wisdom and tremendous Siyata D’Shmaya to accomplish this. Today this same task is facing those responsible for distributing the vaccine. We can make helpful suggestions, but let us give them our support so that with Siyata D’Shmaya they too will be successful with this monumental task.
Although this is not a ‘Halachic Analysis’ article, the author has not mentioned any Halachic sources at all for his assertion. Please lay out a Torah argument, otherwise, it’s just your opinion which may be respected, but also wrong. I also take objection to the phrase ‘murdering fellow Americans’ Besides the Halachic aspect that if you are correct, it would not be murder, but a grama (at best..) the CDC has decided that this will save more lives. You believe they are wrong. This is called a disagreement. If you are wrong, should we say that YOU are ‘murdering fellow Americans’? Or just that you made your best guess and it was wrong? The CDC is not being malicious here. Please re-think this article carefully and amend. And maybe run it by some Gedolim as well.
I strongly agree with 95% of this. The point of healthcare workers is mostly moot because they have already gotten the vaccine. I do feel that there are certain (fewer than the recommended) front line healthcare workers that giving them immunity might help the most vulnerable hospitalized patients and thus will save lives (this can be determined based on statistics- not sure why no one would do this). I also think that if it causes them to open schools (not frum schools that are already open, but those across the county that are inexplicably closed), they should give it to teachers who feel they need it- this will save many lives as kids are being (not literally but figuratively) killed by the lack of regular school (and the economy is severely impacted as well, and the number of teachers is not particularly high). As far as everything else is concerned I have been screaming this for the past month- if you protect the elderly and most vulnerable the death rate will drop by 80%-90% within a month and everything will be able to go back to normal.
I knew it. The whole world is mad. Except for the author of the article. He insinuates that Donald Trump would understand him. So Donald Trump is also not mad.
Rabbi Hoffman is more than correct in his assessment.
No one wants healthcare professionals to sacrifice one day of ill health for any reason.
However, when economics, in the guise of social stability, is an agenda of a medical community, the sacrifice will come to unsuspecting individuals that are too fragile or too challenged to survive unproven paths.
Count his points carefully. They reveal the motivation behind the scenes, prevalent in today’s “I” generation.
We look forward to the vaccination. At the right time and under the blessings of our leaders.
Not those members of an establishment that has brought us questionable “medical” precedence that has murdered the unborn and helpless elderly in the name of selfishness and “science”.
Thank you, Rabbi Hoffman!
What people don’t understand is the order of admission of Vaccines wasn’t just to prevent those people from getting Covid-19. The Government tried to figure out who in society has the most exposure to others.
Therefore they listed essential workers. To vax those people will decrease the spreading of Covid-19!
Really? I thought CDC is God and can do nothing wrong, and we should all be forced to follow their directives! What changed now YWN? You are anti -science conspiracy theorists just like antivaxers.
Bnei Noach are REQUIRED to set up a system of governance (Dinim). The system need not conform with halacha. This dina d’malchusa IS to be respected by the inhabitants, INCLUDING Yidden. To oppose it is NEGED HALACHA. Shame on the author.
And the esteemed Rabbi trusts these “murderous, morally bankrupt, immoral, unethical” people when it comes to the safety of this vaccine????
The problem is much deeper. The problem is the relationship that the Jewish community has with politicians like Governor Cuomo. You see Governor Cuomo is willing to give the vaccine to recovering drug addicts , Governor Murphy is willing to go into minority communities prior to allowing Assisted living facilities in the State to receive it. Now Governor Cuomo is going after par care, now the Jewish community that has supported cuomo is in shock, You see cuomo is morally bankrupt and murphy and judith perschelli are more concerned with the optics than actually giving out the vaccine. , The jewish community lead by certain jewish institutions like the ou and agudah spend all day giving compliments to themselves about their relationships with Government officials . but their relationships mean nothing. Andrew Cuomo is morally bankrupt and Murphy is lost and the jewish institutions are lost as well
I’m a health care worker. I would gladly give it to a 65+ person that C”V has a greater chance of dying. I’m young and will likely be fine if I get it. I’m being offered the vaccine. Please give it to the most vulnerable 65+ first. Don’t “waste” it on people that will likely just get a little fever and be in bed for a few days
You missed this goal:
“Reduce the extra burden COVID-19 is having on people already facing disparities.”
This means affirmative action for vaccines. Certain preferred races will have preference over another less preferred races.
To everyone here that is quoting the Torah. The same Torah says to give the benefit of innocence and doubt to our brothers and sisters. You are jumping to conclusions and condemning a fellow Jew of wrongdoing without even knowing his side of the story. Does your assumption make him guilty and cursed by all of your horrible comments on a Yid that only tried to save. The people that took the vaccine all needed and WANTED it, pressured him into giving it to them and he did it lawfully. STOP JUDGING OUR FELLOW YIDDEN>
Remember the times in history when Rabbi Weissmandel was screaming we need to save ourselves because the government will not save us. Would you say Rabbi Weissmandel was guilty of a crime and it was a Chillul Hashem??
I will say it again, We need to unite and fight antisemitism. Sometimes its ugly head is extremely evident like in Monsey stabbing and other times it is by so to speak professionals in government. No Yid is immune. We need to ask Hashem to save us and we need to strategize as Yakov Avinu did. Every Jewish owned institution is vulnerable no matter what you do. Please put yourselves in your brothers’ position and remember when the antisemite looks at a Jew there is no reason or reasoning. It is just plain blunt Jew-Hatred!! Did we not learn from history? Didn’t we see it now during lockdowns how the Jews were obviously singled out? Isn’t that an agenda?? WAKE UP!!
To those that really really really want to take the vaccine. Think about this>>>
The same CDC that didn’t know this disease is coming to warn us, The same CDC that didn’t know the disease is here when it was here, The same CDC that didn’t know how to treat the disease and still don’t, THEY KNOW THAT THIS VACCINE IS VERY SAFE AND WE SHOULD TAKE IT?????
DO WE REALLY HAVE TO BELIEVE THEM? WHY?