Always_Ask_Questions

> wake up, Jews, he only liked us because

this is a great psychological way to avoid gratitude. You can always explain why someone did something good to you because of some ulterior motive.

RW,
maybe yo are right and vaccine and, kal bvehomer booster, affected him! His RNA is now different, his DNA is different ….

Most likely, he had covid side effects in October leading to “brain fog” that might have stopped him from taking advantage of Biden’s stare during debates – once when he was under covid and could not stop talking. It is also known that covid stays in various body parts, even in brain, way after a person is sick (shown by pathology). He most likely was still under brain fog even on J6 … Now when he took boosters and spends healthy time on the golf course, his brain fog cured and he realized that he needs to speak out and save lives and health of his supporters, as he need their vote in 2 years! So, hopefully you take his example, take the vaccine and continue protesting mandates. Gezunte heig.

First time ever, I am actually rolling on the floor laughing. When I saw first line “trump looks different”, I wanted to joke “is this because he got the booster?”. Then, in the 3rd paragraph you actually say that!

How did you miss the whole 2020 where Trump focused on vaccine development, spent billions on it, appointed a general to organize distribution even while results were not available, the whole country was waiting for Phase 3 results, and Trump hoped to get them before elections (if you want to look for a conspiracy look into how results were reported after elections upon some FDA changing rules).

you are right, moose take 700 lives per year, and they only live in the north.

jackk, Republicans ran Romney – an opposite of Trump in many ways: decent family man, self-made millionaire, great businessman, his father also a decent politician and businessman. He ran a high-road campaign. All opposite to Trump. He ran against a President who performed better that Biden but not by much. He was abused and laughed at by everyone from newspapers to just-deceased Senate leader. When he answered that Russia is our greatest enemy, he was shown to be a clown (that was 2 years before Russian annexed Crimea). So Republicans rightly concluded that running such candidates is honorable but hopeless. At the end, Trump implemented a lot of things that Romney would have done, many possibly in a better way. And pray for Manchin not to break filibuster, as you don’t want to see what will angry Republicans pass in 2024. I don’t want to see that either. Risk of further polarization is very high, we should stop going there.

RebE, “not recommended” works if the other party trusts you and you have very similar minhagim and attitudes; or at least you know well where the other party stands, and the pther parties knows that you know.

Drivers are a much higher threat to drivers than deer. 200 people are killed in US annually by deer collisions and 40,000 from other traffic accidents.

Maybe Hashem is sending deer to remind people to drive slower?

If Dems run a progressive candidate against Trump, then there will be space in between for a third-party moderate candidate. Romney/Manchin.

Charile, So, this served a great purpose, hopefully convincing some people that this particular election event had integrity. I think it will be healthy if there will be multiple probes that will make people more confident. Probably not all, but at least some.

As to methodology, I don’t know details, but it makes sense from your description. you apply approximate automated matching process that identifies cases of potential errors. Then, they presumably report it to lawmakers who have an ability to go verify those errors. As you are saying here, this establishes an upper bound on the error.

Still, if you think that this will reduce enthusiasm of Trump supporters, I think you are wrong. Overall feeling of “injustice” is based on the history of multiple unfounded attacks on Trump over his whole term, and on “legitimate” changes to the voting process that made it easier for “low affinity” voters to drop their ballot in the mail. Some people are channeling their frustration into out-there theories but these theories re not the root cause of the voter frustration.

YS: on a more serious note,
instead of competing between computers and people as often happens in industry – “can computer/robot substitute for the cashier? driver? architect?”, a better approach is how to make two
work together better. This involves computers taking charge up to the point it estimates it is not doing well and then summarizing information to people that will make decisions. For example, during Covid,
many decision making tools that were based on expert rules or machine learning started failing due to changing environment. Humans can look ahead without having all data to prove. Of course, some of FDA/CDC people work more like algorithms than humans – only make decision when absolutely proven. This is discussed re: a studen of Rav Yehuda who disbelieved his teacher describing Yerushalaim gates during time of Moschiach. So, he walked out and went into business. After some time, he saw adream with exactly same gates. So, he came back and said “Rebbe, you were right”.
R Yehuda looked at him “and there is a sack of bones in front of him” or something like that.

from Megila Daf:
Beis din used to send inspectors and fine people who did not take care of kilaim first thing in the spring. Not sure, is this concern about community (would resulting fruit be not kosher?) or are we coercing people in doing their mitzvos?

RebE, the question from the drash (that I don’t remember source of, maybe Sephardi as people here seems not to have heard it) – is this enough to be reading instructions and maybe writing more books about the instructions, or are we supposed to engage with the world and follow instructions.

One thing here is that parnosa is usually addressed as a need to be supported, and then challenges or opportunities for mitzvos that occur within it, usually refusing good money to avoid an averira or dishonesty. There is another aspect, though – engaging and improving the world according to Hashem’s instructions: making people respec Hashem/Jews more, feeding them, curing them, making them laugh … If someone gives $20 to a poor man, he is giving tzedoka. If the same person creates a job for that poor man, or makes an affordable product for hi, or builds him a house – it is just a “parnosa”.

Think of say, Fritz Haber, written out of history of science for his sins of creating poison gases during WW1. His development of fertilizer changed modern agriculture and saved billions of people from starvation. With that and his assisting Jews with connection when they were being expelled by Nazis (they did not dare touch Haber himself for a while, until he left himself and died from a heart attack while contemplating going to EY) – what is his place in Olam Habo based just on his “parnosa”?

We always argue here about whether something does not work. Why not look at successes and see if we can emulate? Not going to other countries, but stats consistently show that “Asians” have 1/3 of casualties than other groups. I don’t know what exactly is the reason – their useless vaccinating or their masks that do not work, or Chinese food, or they are all introverts and WFH – but they are doing something right. Can we find it out what and do the same?

Quebec is announcing a tax on unvaccinated, motivated by healthcare cost. They are saying that unvaxxed 10% are taking 50% of ICUs. Given their “free” medicine, it is essentially saying that unvaxxed should pay for insurance for the additional risk. Any Canadians here?

Torah is literally instruction on what to do in the world. It is a profound argument on what is more important – learning l’shma or l’maan laasot, nothing personal here.

For example, Avoda Zara 17b: Rav Huna says: Anyone who occupies himself with Torah study alone is considered like one who does not have a God. The alternative offered there is tzedokah. Obviously, one needs to have funds to do tzedokah, whether inherited or earned.

Again, I am not making a silly argument one v. another in modern practical world. I am saying that those who insist on “only learning” (or “only working”) have to prove their case and not pretend that other opinions are outrageous. These opinions are all over Gemora and later. You can justify deviations, but do not make deviations normal, and normal devious.

The moshal about the father and son is beautiful and maybe a good answer to my question, so I hate to offer a different interpretation, maybe consider it an “additional insight”:

Maybe a working person is _actually_ taking care of the Father’s house, while a learning person is reading Father’s instructions on how to take care of the house. Hope this is not misconstrued as an “attack on learning”. In my defense, I am not vaguely recalling maybe a similar Sephardi moshal: where Balabos gave instructions to his servant what to do while he is on the trip and to review instructions daily. On his return, everything was ruined but the servant cheerfully responded that he faithfully reviewed instructions “every morning and every evening”.

YS > I am not unconvinced that most of the posters on CR are not robots

This is called Turing Test – whether you cant distinguish between human and bot. Maybe some yeshiva bucher is just testing his AI skills? In fairness, the Turing test is becoming easier and easier – not only because computers are getting smarter but because of yeridas hadoros.

RebE, is this still so? If we define parnosa as abililty to have some food, shelter, clothes, a little extra food for shabbos – then, really, if you are legal, you will get this from state of NJ withou, has vesholom, any davening. So, maybe, tefilah is to earn honest living. Even then, the situation is not as dire as yam suf. Yes, everyone is anxious when looking for/losing a job, but 95% of people who want it are employed. Need more guidance how to apply this Chidushei Harim to our days.

Yeserbius > Most of you have a primary care doctor. One that you’re had since before COVID that you go to when you’re sick.

You are right. To my best knowledge, none of the anti-vaxers (or any other anti-anything) here quoted their doctors. Still, asking a doctor in an emerging situation has limits (I presume you have a garden-variety primary doctor, not on university faculty):

1) As R Meir Twersky wrote – we value life more than the general culture, or in a case of great uncertainty: ask several doctors and take the safest approach. It is called “robust estimation”, I am pretty impressed by R Twersky’s approach here.

2) Doctor will give you a conservative answer and will follow general policy that may be behind times at current speed. I asked about a particular covid action my, pretty experienced in other aspects, doctor – he said that there is no recommendation “yet” for my situation. So, I acted on my own, and he called me two months later saying that the recommendation arrived (to do what I did). In another case, he said “we only do it for research subject, I can’t order it within the system, there is no button” (that is, yes, it is important but the system does not let me do it).

This is practical – as in latest Omicron craze, maybe people who got infected en masse lately – would not if they would take action earlier. In my area, suddenly everyone is in serious masks in some stores – 2 weeks after they should have.

we have a related case in halakha of “almost” forcing someone to do the right thing despite the explicit autonomy – beat up the husband until he says “I _want_ to give a get”. Is this because another person is affected?

If you hold by the above analogy, presuming there are some consequences of non-vaccination for other people (taxing hospitals, reducing transmission even somewhat – and more for Delta that was out there at least as of last week), then nudging them – require for jobs, flying, eating out – is ok and is not the same as vaccinating by force.

RebE > don’t believe the Satmar Rav ztz’l said that as mentioned above.

I am also suspicious: 9am is too late to start working.

Gadol > However, by initially overstating vaccination benefits,

what did they overstate? (as admitted, I am not following political statements closely, reading scientific literature takes too much time).

I think there were some things that people initially did not predict, that would be foreseeable to experts – such as decreasing antibody immunity, robust T-cell immunity, new variants with increasing propagation (that was high to begin with), inability of Bidenistas to do anything productive. Mi hu haham, haroeh es hanolad.

I am not hugh fan of federal mandates. There are many things that feds should be doing, but on the substance of your argument:

VAERS canard is totally incongruent with all research done using controls and via historical data in multiple countries. Research discovered some complications related to myocarditis and it is well documented in terms of risk rates per age (and that risk is lower than risk of same disease from COVID).

Transmission was significantly reduced for Delta when mandates came out. You are right that the omicron seems to be transmitting more. I see only preliminary estimates that possibly transmits less but by less than Delta. So, in this sense, you are right that mandate may be less relevant.

Remaining public policy argument for vaccines is that they reduce serious hospitalization and thus stress on medical system. Paraphrasing a WSJ comment: I am a nurse for 50 years. We are all exhausted by now. Know that if you arrive here we will still take care of you, whatever your views are. But please do what you can to reduce our stress so that we can continue taking care of patients. There is also a libertarian argument – you should be free to sign a paper that you will be last in line for medical services and responsible for all medical and burial costs.

At the end, I am not sure what is our interest in discussing mandates, instead of discussing our obligations. All anti-vaccine arguments I saw here were not based on any psak, or any valid medical information, just on some website quotes, some based on gross anti-Torah notions of disregard of human life, of logic.

TLIK +1. I guess I am a Nistar (Modern-Litvishe) Satmar. Same for Igros Moshe, I think there was a response from R Kanevsky recently why religiously lighting candles does not always help raise a T’Ch – “maybe he did not supervise what the child is learning”. Note focus on parent supervising, not “maybe school did not teach properly”.

Also, current Daf Megilah talks about several people giving their segulos for long life. Here is what I learned:
First lesson – these questions are being asked of actual people who are pretty old, not from a rando in the street who wants to teach longevity.
Second – those segulot intersect but vary. According to my maggid shiur, this means that each person might have his own moment in time when he needs to make a special effort that is special to him. Gemora sometimes refers other people who do same middah when explaining it, but does not mention anyone who copied someone else and had a long life!
3 – while patience is mentioned, it is NOT a required one apparently! One elder’s guards chased R Akiva to the palmtree for asking about longecity secrets until he proved that he is a T’Ch.

Syag, I am talking about non-acute issues already that might have accumulated from all this. If your oxygen is 99, B’H, great. If you simply too lazy to check but would rather write about it, ok too. I actually tried to post something non-controversial, but never mind 🙂