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Why is this happening again? We were told it would only happen if the test positivity hit 9%, but we’re only at a median of about 4% and they’re shutting it all down again. How will businesses survive?
Maybe the frum businesses aren’t supposed to survive?
Some places, like Monsey, have hit 9%. Other places are also 3 to 4 times higher than NYC on average and rising fast. Several people passed away last week, and for every person who died there are dozens more in hospitals, and for every person in the hospital there are dozens more who are experiencing severe COVID-19 related health problems, and for every person experiencing severe COVID-19 related health problems, there are dozens more experiencing mental illness from being unable to go outside.
We should be doing everything possible to stop this from happening! Not pretending that it’s all over or that it’s not so bad!
People need to stop testing. We need to send everyone who had it already to get tested to drop our numbers. But the most important thing right now is for people to stop testing.
Tachles…..perhaps you didn’t notice but the mayor has been using the 3 percent positive test threshold for the past several weeks as certain neighborhoods were consistently showing infection rates well above city averages. Aside from the real burdens that the lockdown resulting from non-compliance with the mask and distancing rules will impose on parents and small business, the petty bickering between the mayor and the governor only makes New Yorkers more skeptical of anything coming out of their public officials.
Rava: Brilliant idea. Only those who know they are covid-free should be allowed to take the test so yidden can “flatten the curve” and all the others who might have been exposed or show symptoms should follow the President’s advice and just “get on with their lives” and not be afraid to be infected. All those news photos of refrigerated trucks with body bags outside hospitals from several months ago were fake news. If you do get sick, the President has promised to send helicopters to Willy, BP etc and fly you to his hospital suite in Maryland where you will be treated by his personal physicians. If by some chance you are not the only one needing medical attention, you will get an overnight mail package including hydroxychloroquine (with azithromycin and zinc) and a hand written note wishing you a refuah shelamah.
Perhaps it would be easier for yidden to wear a mask and stand vuv amos apart per the guidance of public health experts, rabbonim and askanim.Don’t get tested, so then when you kill someone you can claim that you didn’t know you were dangerous.
Precisely how does this reflect Jewish values?
There is a reason they don’t say how many people tested for covid, and how many are positive.
Last week one day they wrote 12 covid 19 patients in 11219 which 2/3 of it is in Borough Park, and it was 5% of all tests.
It only means that we need to test more people that aready had covid!
No lockdowns in the frum areas in Manhattan or the Bronx. We are wearing masks, maintaining social distance, and holding a lot of outdoor minyans. Schools are mandating masks, breaking down partitiions between classrooms, and keeping kids separated. Not wanting to wear a mask has the same effect as not wanting to wear a yarmulke — child gets sent home.
Charlie- does being able to blame chareidim for their troubles give you that extra dose of oneg and simcha this chag? You are so foryunate to know Gds ways with such clarity, perhaps you can help me out with some personal decisions.
Oh, and out of curiosity, how many square feet is your apartment and how many people are living in it?
There is a lockdown in Midwood, which there is a strict adherence to the lew of masks and social distancing. There are more there than in Borough Park.
I viewed a video of a protest at the corner of 50th and 15th avenue, outside the building in which I was raised. The video threatened more protests, civil disobedience and lawsuits against the governor and mayor. Face masks were destroyed and very few were wearing them. The corona virus seems not to be a concern, nor are the official guidelines.
It seems that the Golus Jew is no longer. For centuries the Chachomim zt”l paskened to keep a low profile and not anger the goyim. We were told that we are in golus and that is our fate until the geulah shleima b”v. The Zionist State abrogated these instructions that were espoused by the gedolim through the centuries and therefore must be dismantled. But this age-old attitude is now being ignored on a grand scale. A Shvereh Golus? Nah. We won’t let those goyim push us around anymore. We have constitutional rights, voting power, and the best lawyers. We’ll show them who’s boss.
I am curious as to whether the Jewish people (it’s not much different here in Eretz Hakodesh) have made a conscious decision to forsake the centuries-old approach to the goyim, and if so, if there has been a documented about-face on the part of the Gedolim.
Syag, apartment sizes do matter, indeed. Hard to judge which part of the problem is due to human factors and which due to environment. I can understand other locations mostly by newspaper photos. Some photos are zoomed in on someone and it is hard to say whether they are representative of general behavior. Still, I saw many wide-area Israeli and NY photos showing many people in masks, and many without; on the beard; on the mouth only; taken down to talk to a neighbor. Is it different from non-religious Israelis and Americans? not sure. But why should we hold religious Jews to such a low standard?
But why should we hold religious Jews to such a low standard?…when it’s so much easier just to blame them for whatever destruction we can link them to?
Fixed that for you
Syag,
thanks for fixing my post. Let me return the favor, then.You seem to be claiming that religious Jews should behave same as other communities, but, due to smaller apartments, they will understandably be affected more by the pandemic, and that’s OK. We can keep our equal rights sustained, sorry, grandpa. We’ll say the kaddish with no masks, don’t worry.
The use of numbers to determine policy is fraught with complication. Here is a simple rule that governs all use of statistics in the science world.
Most research is done to use a sampling that is then used as the basis for generalizing to the whole. That automatically involves error. So there must be measures taken to insure that the sample best represents the entire population that is being studied.
We have all read the political polls, which must identify the scope of the sample (likely voters, registered voters, random people, members of a particular party, etc.). We then read a final line that the numbers are within several points of accuracy. This site is not the place for a statistics lesson. But this is enough to point to the matter of inference from a sample to a whole. One can trash the meaning of results by noting the poor sampling used. And that is much the issue here.
The media are culprits of using a single individual as representative of a whole, something no statistician would ever accept.
I consider Cuomo an enemy of the Jews, and same goes for the mayor. I wish them the worst, and daven for that daily. But I do not believe in these protests, not because of the position, but the yelling there has no effect. I want to see these evil politicians ousted at the ballot box.
“We can keep our equal rights sustained, sorry, grandpa. We鈥檒l say the kaddish with no masks, don鈥檛 worry”
I have no idea how this connects to me accusing you of looking for things to blame on the frum community. Please enlighten me
And if you missed the point, the numbers are higher in all communities where lots of people are stuffed in small apartments. (It happens to be true in some black and hispanic areas too but is being “overlooked”) You spoke of numbers going up superiorly attributing it to your exemplory rule following, disregarding the reality of demographics.
No clue your attaching it to killing people. Must just be a sick obssession of yours to accuse jews of murder. While those of us without the luxury of square footage have not been able to stop the spread to our kids, how dare you imply we have not kept our elders safe. You should be ashamed of yourself.
zip codes such as 10023 and 10471 with high percentages of frum yidden in Manhattan and the Bronx are actually testing below city average positivity rates and are not subject to any special restrictions. Clearly they are doing something right in terms of complying with public health guidelines versus the Brooklyn and Queens zip codes with much higher positivity rates and much lower compliance with mask and social distancing rules. Not too late to begin making a real effort to comply before the flu season begins and potentially serious hospitalization issues emerge. Yes, both Cuomo and deBlasio are inept in terms of how they have communicated with the frum tzibur but for now, their guidance is the same as our own rabbonin and askanim have been providing for months, apparently to no avail.
Listen Liberal Democrats have the same pattern of behaviour no matter the forum
Biden can get up on a debate stage and spend 90 minutes insulting the PResident of the United States including calling him a “clown” but somehow Trump is at fault for interrupting him.
Someone can state that people who are forced to take a nuanced position on things and not swallow the Liberal line on this virus are “murdering their grandparents”
Yet we are not “Civil”
Syag. All I am saying: if you live in small apartments, you should be more cautious. You listed multiple reasons thru several threads why you should not be more cautious.
Other poor community you mention consist of people who work in risky conditions and have low education.
A community that learns Talmud should do better.
“You listed multiple reasons thru several threads why you should not be more cautious”
I listed multiple reasons why you have to stop calling other jews murderers, why you have to stop assuming your personal comfort level is the only correct one, why you have to stop calling out jews for not caring without knowing it’s true. It’s not about masks, it’s the sick tjings you guys call them and the way you are so sure your hypervigilance is the standard.
You want to advocate for masks, ask others to wear them, go ahead. But the disgusting hateful rhetoric that comes along with it is no less dangerous than 100 plagues.
Are these protests going to help or hurt us more. Just curious.
rational:
Excellent post, in my humble opinion.
However, I think that there is a difference here.
The Governor and Mayor are essentially imposing a gezeiras shmad. No shuls, no schools, etc.On Chanukah, we fought the Yevanim, even with actual tools of war, Esav’s tools, because they threatened the Torah. Whereas, on Purim, when it was “only” our lives that were threatened, we did teshuva, davened, etc. until the gezeirah was nullified. And the story continues there.
This current period whatever precise context it may be, includes this gezeiras shmad, which is also, liHavdil, also against our constitutional rights.
So that seems to call for a vocal defense of the Torah, including Agudath Israel’s lawsuit against this terrible over-reach by the City and State governments.
Syag,
could you help me understand how this 2 positions can be reconciled:1) dont tell me that I need a mask, it is my private issue
2) high infection in my community is due to overcrowdingyou expressed each of these positions clearly, thanks. I just do not see how this machloket between
Syag and Syag can be reconciled.HaKatan – government did not release the virus on Jews, at least it is not US government. Thus, it is not a gezerah shmad. We do not blame TV forecasters when it rains in the Sukkah.
Whatever your mayor and governor say, the outbreak is objectively happening. You want less outbreak – make your community be more careful; do teshuva for any other aveiros related or unrelated to the pandemic.
There is a teshuva from R Mayer Twersky in May stating (predicting?) that all politicians will have their own motives, and we should make our judgment based on Torah values independent of what politicians are saying. You seem to be so carried away blaming a politician that you are ready to hurt yourself to prove your point.
I see in a protest letter – “how dare they close shuls ner a holiday”? Maybe Hashem is sending these politicians to davka protect you near the holiday, so that you can learn in a healthy state the whole year ahead.
I don’t hear your question, but i also don’t believe i said the first point.
I said overcrowding contributes, not is the cause of, but it still doesn’t change the fact that that first comment is either taken out of a specific context, or not mine.
Hakatan, mo’adim l’simchah
I shudder as I realize you approved of something I wrote, maybe Moshiach is knocking at our door.
I beg to differ on your conclusion.I am no fan of deBlasio, and though I think he’s a walking disaster, since I live in EY I don’t have a right to pass judgement. That said, viewing closing shuls and schools as a gzeiras shmad and presenting it as such is a tactical and strategic error. A gzeiras shmad intends to sabotage and ultimately destroy religious observance. To claim that this is the case here is a weak, even absurd argument.
One can argue, as Syag does above, that there is discrimination owing to ignorance of living conditions, and in general, the Orthodox community is doing its part in preventing the spread of the disease. That is a fair argument, even if one disagrees with its validity. But that is not what this video portrays. The public attitude shown by a well known (?) community activist is one of blatant defiance, threats, and what I describe as a “the Orthodox community controls public policy, and we’ll get rid of you (read “goy”) soon enough” attitude.
This is contrary to what the chachomim have said for generations, and anyone who is familiar with the teshuvos , writings , and public policies of the Gedolim of yesteryear will see that this is true. I have suspected for many years that this policy has changed, and maybe deservedly so. I certainly would agree with this change, it’s no secret that I’m a Zionist . I was wondering if anyone else has noticed it.It appears I’m not the only one raising the question of how to behave amongst the goyim.
From an Israeli chareidi website (yes, I’m aware of the dissonance):
?诪讛 注诐 讛讗讬住讜专 诇讛转讙专讜转 讘讗讜诪讜转 讛注讜诇诐? 讝讛 谞讗诪专 专拽 注诇 讛拽诪转 讛诪讚讬谞讛The comment was made based on a NYP video showing a photo-journalist documenting a protest in Boro Park and suffering the consequences.
@rational, I agree. Seems like American Jews assimilated into free speech and separation of powers – even those who do not learn this at school. This never ended well, of course – with Rome, Spain, Germany … I think we should be both grateful and mindful at the same time.
My prior posts in response haven’t been approved.
I
l’ll try again.The 讗讬住讜专 诇讛转讙专讜转 讘讗讜诪讜转 讛注讜诇诐 is just as in force as it always has been since the start of galus.
However, if we look to both Chanukah and Purim, we see an interesting difference, which Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro points out in various media.
On Chanukah, we used the tools of Esav against the misyavnim and yevanim, because the latter groups’ target was the Torah, not us, so we had to defend the Torah by even resorting to Esav’s tools when needed.
By contrast, on Purim, we used our tools to annul the gezeira, namely Tefillah and Teshuva, because the target then was “only” us, not the Torah, so using Esav’s tools would not have worked there. Obviously, the story continues from there, but that’s besides the point.
Same with the Zionists (Esav’s tools have still not achieved the Zionists even a single day of peace in its bloody existence).
This particular words of this (not very “well known”) “community activist” are not indicative of the rest of Klal Yisrael. However, it is a chutzpah and rishus for the authorities to close down the shuls (10 people only no matter what is the building size?), especially at this point.
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