@madealiyah Why are you looking at this as a binary outcome? That either we never wear masks or we always do? You seem to want me to provide you with a number that I don’t know, so fine I’ll make something up. When US COVID deaths go down 90% from their peak and stay that for one month we can stop wearing masks.
Furthermore, you keep stating that your main problem with wearing a mask is that it is uncomfortable. Like I keep repeating, that’s simply not a good enough reason. There are many things that are uncomfortable but we do anyway.
Maybe one day you’ll admit that maybe, just maybe, you’re not really smarter than all of the talmidei chachomim (and it’s not just one or two) who haven’t mandated masks in their yeshivos/shuls/kehillos.
That day is today: There is little chance that I am smarter than any of the Talmidei Chachamim you are thinking of.
When did it become controversial to say that my Rabbonim are correct and other Rabbonim are not? Especially in a matter unrelated to Torah, this isn’t “Elu v’Elu”. Look how the Chovos L’vovos discusses medicine in terms of the theory of bodily humours. Do we say that he is absolutely correct and every doctor and Rov who ever paskened a medical shaylo alive today is wrong?
You know, I was confused at first with the reactions, but now after talking to people, reading what people have been saying, and listening to various speeches, I have an idea as to what’s going on. So I’m just disappointed that the people who surround many of our Rabbonim that are supposed to be the ones doing the research on secular matters, are instead resorting to believing everything they hear in the shul coffee room. Were you not disappointed two years ago when several Rabbonim were fooled by fake news and started saying that vaccines are dangerous?
Dangerously distorted view towards gedolim and daas torah
I would argue that it’s others who have a dangerously distorted view. People are nebbuch treating some gedolim as nevi’im (l’havdil) where they cannot possibly be wrong even on matters they are unfamiliar with. I am not sure how these individuals view a machlokes.
Rav Breuer ZT”L famously retired when he turned 80. He said that his reasons are that he always refused to pasken on shaylos that he couldn’t personally investigate and once he became old he didn’t have the koach to look into every new situation. I can’t find any flaws with that logic and he’s been proven right time and time again. Do you fellas not remember the debacle 15 years ago with Rav Elyashiv ZTL’s Gabbai and the psak the Rav gave on Indian sheitels?