Excuses for not isolating.

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  • #1863319
    Doing my best
    Participant

    There are many people in our communities that did not follow the isolation rules the way they should’ve. I compiled this list of excuses that I heard, and I’m looking to see what additions the YWN CoffeeRoom has to offer.
    1) Corona is a hoax by the dems to mess up trump.
    2) it’s ok because the goyim also don’t follow the rules.
    3) I’m not scared.
    4) I heard that there was a study somewhere that kids don’t transfer it.
    5) you’re just anti-minyan.
    6) I heard a story that an askan was in a pizza shop Motzei pesach.
    7) you’re really worried?
    8) more people die in car crashes/ we don’t shut down for flu.
    9) I didn’t follow the rules till now so now I have antibodies and can continue not following the rules.
    10) The economy will collapse, so to save it I decided to let my kid play in the neighbors house.
    List the excuses you’ve heard over the past months.
    (Please don’t use this thread to argue about the quarantine.)

    #1863456
    Jersey Jew
    Participant

    I have a better idea for you. Why don’t you stop looking to see what yenim is doing and worry more about yourself. Worry about your midos. Are they good? Do you perhaps look at other people and find the bad things about them? Think about it.

    Stop worrying about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. YOU should only be concerned about YOURSELF.

    #1863477
    🍫Syag Lchochma
    Participant

    For the life of me I cannot fathom why someone would consider this worth posting. We have spent all these weeks in our home, secluded from each other with one shiur after another urging us to up our game in how we think, feel and speak about each other. It may sound entertaining to you, or maybe you just wanted an audience to vent your feelings toward certain Jews, I don’t know. But I do hope it doesn’t spiral into worse.

    #1863508
    akuperma
    Participant

    How about, I’m likely to catch it regardless of what I do, and the price of isolating is too high relative to the very small chance of death or serious illness.

    If you consider the typical Yid gives up most of his income by deciding on being Shomer Shabbos, and then undertakes a frum lifestyle which takes up virtually all of his disposable income, and he does that not out of fear of a virus, but out of fear of Ha-Shem. And he probably believes that Torah and Mitsvos is not only his raison d’etre, but is the entire reason the universe was created, and is allowed to continuing in existence. So there is a chance of 100 in 100 that if he gives up Torah and Mitvos his world will disintegrate. And then try to scare him with a virus that apparently only makes people sick in 1 in 10 cases (based on antibody and ransom testing data), and only causes serious illness perhaps 1 in 20, and is fatal only 1 in 200, it just isn’t very scary.

    #1863511
    ubiquitin
    Participant

    Doing my best
    Here is another illogical excuse
    “Stop worrying about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. YOU should only be concerned about YOURSELF”

    #1863552
    🍫Syag Lchochma
    Participant

    I think the generalizations are making a lot of drama.
    1. There are people who don’t want to continue isolating after TWO MONTHS of it and they are being accused of not isolating.
    2. Although many people had very mild cases, many, many of those people who didn’t get “really sick” suffered terribly. Some say it was the worst pain of their lives, that they wanted to die, that they thought they would die etc. These are quotes from those who “just got sick but didn’t have to go to the hospital”
    3. Isolating and social distancing is NOT intended to eradicate the disease, just stagger the infections. So new cases are expected and mostly unpreventable in the LONG term. We must prevent it from spreading to the high risk population, but there was never a possibility of making it go away by staying home. Don’t blame new infections on people as if they weren’t part of the plan.
    4. Finances is NEVER a good reason to put any lives at risk. Suffering long term health and emotional damage from losing everything on the other hand is a legitimate reason to weigh which is the lesser of two tragedies. But people saying the economy overall is worth more than a life are nutcases.
    5. Saying a medication is safe or not safe is irrelevant at this time. Is chemo safe? would you give it to your kid as a booster? No. When doctors provide medications they do so in terms of the risk of taking it versus the risk of not taking it in terms of what is currently going on in the persons physiology. Something being safe for lupus means it’s better than what lupus has to offer. Something being safe for Covid19 just needs to be better than what the risks of covid are offering.
    6. Although not everyone followed the social distancing/quarantine, most people did. And just because the news says it was a jewish problem, that doesn’t mean it was, cuz there are plenty videos to show it wasn’t.
    7. Just because it was necessary to stop minyanim and yeshivos from meeting, doesn’t mean that avodas Hashem is not the absolute priority in our lives and what really sustains us. The ones who mistakenly took that fact to mean it is okay to put others at risk are no worse than those who wish to continue to put the physical precautions over spiritual actions when it is no longer proscribed.
    7a. Not a lot of care was taken to even clarify if people were put at risk in the minyanim
    7b. Not a lot of the people screaming about minyanim opened their mouths even once about grocery shopping in big chains
    7c. Sometimes we really do have to follow health guidelines even when they infringe on what we believe is right. Follow your Rav, and check your motives.

    #1863555
    Joseph
    Participant

    Syag, Side point, question —

    If all that could be done is to “just stagger the infections”, as “new cases are expected and mostly unpreventable in the LONG term”, then how is it even possible to “prevent it from spreading to the high risk population”, as you stated “there was never a possibility of making it go away by staying home”?

    #1863558
    ubiquitin
    Participant

    Syag excellent post

    Thank you

    The only minor quibble is regarding “Finances is NEVER a good reason to put any lives at risk. Suffering long term health and emotional damage from losing everything on the other hand is a legitimate reason to weigh which is the lesser of two tragedies. But people saying the economy overall is worth more than a life are nutcases.”

    I’m conflicted (and I’m not sure I disagree with you given the middle sentence there ) . It is a common refrain that “saving a life trumps everything*” but that isn’t completely true. Fro example in regard to pidyon shevuim, do we give everything to save a person? shulchan Aruch YD 254:4 says this is assur because of “tikkun olam” (Now it depends on what the reason for this tikun olam is: (Gemara gives two reasons too much pressure on the community or to prevent further kidnappings. distinction wopuld be if a individual can afford it so there is no pressure on the community can he do it. Achronim seem split as to how we pasken ) As to how much it relates to a virus but clearly “”saving a life trumps everything” is not 100% true.

    It is clear to me that preventing the overwhelming of the hospital system was worth the shutdown. I donl;t think reasonable people can disagree on that.
    I am not so sure about shutting the economy overall” to save ” a life” I am even less sure about where that line would be drawn 2 lives ? 100? 1000?

    Again I dont think we disagree, because the “financial pressure” the Gemara discusses isnt (I dont htink) money to go to disneyland or something like that. Without an economy society can’t function leading to many problems including, as you put it, “Suffering long term health and emotional damage” I think (hope) the people who say “the economy overall is worth more than a life ” mean it that way

    * yes except 3 cardinal sins

    #1863559
    🍫Syag Lchochma
    Participant

    Great question. I got my info from reading up on everything I could find (of the reliable writings). I haven’t seen an answer to that because there probably isn’t one. Short of continued distancing and caution of the high risk population from the general publuc til there is either a vaccine, treatment or herd immunity I don’t know.

    #1863560
    Old Crown Heights
    Participant

    “There was never a possibility of making it go away by staying home”?
    – Yes. Flatten the curve always meant stagger the rate of infection so that the hospitals and their staff don’t get overwhelmed.
    And need to open back up to save the economy (and other health problems caused by extended lock down) says nothing about the terrible tzar people might endure until death when catching covid due to opening things back up.

    (Unless they prove or decide to accept and make available the Zelenko Protocol which Dr. Zelenko very much still insists works and apparently the President of the United States believes and is on himself, or they come up with something better.)

    #1863572
    🍫Syag Lchochma
    Participant

    Ubiq- thanks! I was hoping you’d comment.
    I do think we agree. I was trying to make a point that my post was already too long to elaborate on. There are people saying we need to open the economy because of the serious damage it is doing to people. Others hear that and say,”yeah, why should we lose money because of a virus” Or they are wrongly accused of being concerned about money vs lives. There are so many uninformed people out there who don’t seem to understand that the worry about the crashing economy is because of the potential damage it does to human lives, not wallets. And while you are right, it can’t trump ALL, it needs to be understood as two sides of a “lives at risk” coin that must be weighed.

    #1863633
    anonymous Jew
    Participant

    Syag, we discussed this before. Keeping the economy closed creates other, serious health issues. I have glaucoma and could not get my eye pressure checked for 4 months . My eye dr reopened last week. Diabetics, heart patients and many other people with chronic conditions have gone unchecked and are potentially worse. How many cancers have gone undetected because diagnostic procedures have been cancelledm .Hospitals are in grave financial condition because they have been unable to perform the elective procedures that they make money on. The Covid cases are money losers. The economy vs covid was never meant to be the issue. At this point people have to go back to work. Anyone drawing a salary has no business telling the unemployed to stay home. It’s not either or at this point. We can reopen the economy while still taking steps to protect the most vulnerable. Will there be more deaths? Most likely yes, but there is no way to tell if it wouldn’t have happened anyway .

    #1863624
    n0mesorah
    Participant

    Dear Syag,
    Regarding number 7 a & b.
    Their is reason to assume any disease is effective at spreading indoors where people congregate for hours. Remember, that a lot of the early spread was because of prayer services, e. g. South Korea. Time was of essence at that point. The research available now, points to minyanim as a great way to spread any coronavirus.
    People were contacting their community leaders in a very civil manner to fix the shopping issue. They were using all their energy on the denialists, they thought the stores could work it out on their own. They eventually did. And those in denial took the minyan as the rally cry. Nobody from the religious sector was advising against hysterical shopping, we had to be told that by our secular leaders. The minyan question took up way too much energy, and it led to tragedy.

    #1863670
    Doing my best
    Participant

    Oh well, this was supposed to be a more light hearted thread. I guess I should’ve realized this is just going to be another “we should/n’t open” thread.

    #1863681
    🍫Syag Lchochma
    Participant

    AJ- i am pretty sure i was siding with you.

    DMB – i apologize if that was your intention, to me it sounded like yet another “let’s list the excuses stupid people are using to rationalize being irresponsible “. My mistake i guess.

    #1863721
    ☕ DaasYochid ☕
    Participant

    I know the lockdown was officially about flattening the curve to prevent overwhelming the system, but I don’t believe its value (and certainly the value of maintaining social distancing longer term) was/is limited to that.

    First of all, how can we ignore the value of extending life? Think about how much time, effort, and money we put into extending the life of an I’ll, even terminally ill, loved one (we shouldn’t know from such things). Even if ultimately everyone would get it, ch”v, flattening the curve extended lives

    Also, the longer someone waits to get sick, the more the medical establishment knows how to treat it, and hopefully be”H they’ll find better treatments and even hopefully vaccines, so hopefully many lives can be saved.

    #1863739
    🍫Syag Lchochma
    Participant

    DY-100%
    The point i was trying to make is that it can only delay it and for those beneficial reason, but not make it go away to put those high-risk individuals in the clear.

    #1863831
    ubiquitin
    Participant

    “Also, the longer someone waits to get sick, the more the medical establishment knows how to treat it”

    A great point. I can’t put my finger as to what it is, and look forward to data that wil eventually emerge. but without question the covid pats Iv’e seen over the past month did a lot better than those a month before. Again this is purely anecdotal , and I can’t tell you what it is that seems to be helping (remedesvir ? convalescent plasma? stopped giving axithromycin? heparin?) But without question patients who a months ago I’d have thought were doomed (based on then current experience) are doing better when they arrive now

    #1863872
    ☕ DaasYochid ☕
    Participant

    But without question patients who a months ago I’d have thought were doomed (based on then current experience) are doing better when they arrive now

    Maybe the hospitals are less crowded so the patients are actually getting the attention they need. I’m hearing rumors that many patients actually died from lack of nutrition.

    #1863913
    ubiquitin
    Participant

    “Maybe the hospitals are less crowded so the patients are actually getting the attention they need.”

    Yes I meat to include that. that is certainly true to. Is challenging managing ICU patients outside of the ICU. In our ICU the doors are see through vitals displayed at the nursing station. aside from the nurse limited to 2-3 patients tops there is someone else monitoring all the vitals.
    during the height of corona with these patients being managed on a regular floor in a closed room, Unless the nurse physicly enters the room (After donning proper PPE) nobody knew how the patient was doing , and he/she was caring for more patients than is ideal.

    Lack of nutrition I havent seen. I’m skeptical it was as big an issue as reported. Patients and familes often become focused on nutrition /feeding even when patient is say already getting tube feeds or if electrolytes are being monitored. I obviously can’t speak for all hospitals, but more than once Ive met familes accusing hospitals of starving patients who were being getting tube feeds which in their view “isnt really food” .

    #1864184
    hachareidy hoamity
    Participant

    The question is one and only what is and what was the halocho on the matter and that is up to interpretation of a lot of tshuvois and sugyois that there were rabonim that knew how to disect the info and how to get the info they needed and there were rabbonim that didn’t..

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