Always_Ask_Questions

Health > I guess you didn’t get the Gist of my post before. The Frum people here, at least most of them, couldn’t care less about Covid.

I understood that before, and this probably clarifies your overall interest in treatment v. vaccine.

This is exactly why I am proposing an improvement that does not rely on public involvement. Would administration agree to changing HVAC setting to higher outside air, changing a filter, or keeping a door/window open? If there is a cluster of cases tied to a place, hopefully administration will listen.

In some cases, this can be done without consulting anyone. If you are able to change HVAC setting and it will cost them money for extra heating, send a donation or tell me where to send it.

Gadol > any time spent beyond that necessary to engage in essential life-supporting functions

I think, this is a definition of Toraso Umanoso.

I also think some people here define “learning” time narrowly. IMHO, any discussion that involves clarification or application of Torah principles qualifies. Of course, if the discussion is done badly, without integrity, trying to defend your position rather than clarify the truth, it is bad Torah learning. In that sense, CR is riskier than memorizing a Mishna.

recent study from Sweden, comparing family members of an immune person v. comparable non-immune person. 50% reduction in transmission due to immune person. That is (my inference), half of transmissions are within families. This is pre-delta, same effect for disease, one or two vaccines and relatively early after vaccines. They caution that delta transmission may be higher under 1 vaccine.

In other news, US blood donors are now 83% immune as of July, of which 20% are naturally. 65+ are 92% of which 11% naturally (age is wisdom). Blood donors are not the same as overall distribution, of course. I presume most stubborn deniers of everything, do not part with their blood easily.

My projection: number of vaccinated people increases by 3% a month, number of cases by 2% (1% detected, 2x ratio of detected to not detected). So, US will be almost fully immune in a couple of months, not counting the most stubborn population.

for Syag,
I just looked up a recent case study from a Belgium 1-12 school where traced cases at school as much as they could. Teachers were masked, students were not. Ths is pre-delta. They were able to trace about half of cases to either in-school or at-home transmission. The rest are unknown. So, school and home have a significant part. Among known transmissions, 2/3 were at school, 1/3 at home. School ones were about equally distributed between adult-adult, adult-child, child-child.

> doesn’t apply to individuals who think that they’re strong enough

To clarify, the psak was not about watching mindless movies, but about taking a college class in comparative religions. If someone is planning to be in academia or politics, he should. If someone simply wants to satisfy his wild imagination, should not.

It came up in Sanhedrin, where R Eleizer teaches different types of Avoda Zara to R Akiva by showing different types of magical cucumbers and explaining which ones are really hayav misa and which ones are fake. He also laments that others did not ask questions.

The Rav said that he gets this question every year.
Students- nu, what’s the answer?
Rav – depends on who is asking.
Students <shocked>.

Avira > i never said a kid will learn in practice that it’s ok, i was saying that the influence is subliminal

I get it. Rav Twersky writes about people who work in places where inappropriate language and attitudes are used (not just coarse, but just not nice enough) and then, eventually, bring it into homes. He calls on all of us to guard ourselves when we come home (or to CR).

common, I understand the feeling, but is this really wrong for a non-Jew to take a picture on their own – other than the objections from my post.

As to positive image, I was once approached by an excited Mexican-extraction soldier in Alabama, who used to know some Jews back in Mexico. He was apparently watching me for a week, and, I guess, found me worthy. We know Who is watching, but sometimes do not know who else …

coffee > I thought the reason was because then the government will tie kfirah into giving the money

In this particular case, R Schach gave both the answer and the reason above. I presume politicians would not “buy” an answer even from a gadol when a large monetary loss is involved 🙂

The conditional money case is interesting and might have happened at other times. Might happen again with the current government. I think Liberman wants to introduce math and other kfiros into Charedi system. Not sure whether this currently stands.

Syag, Pirkei Avos suggests davening for the government so that people will not swallow each other alive. Even non-democratic. Rosh Hashona yomi – we were dating documents using years of the current King, Jewish or even more for non-Jewish, so that we stay in the good graces of the government. We all here seem to live in free countries, whether with or without a Queen. Our ability to kvetch about the government is a privilege.

As to democracy: you may think that some decisions are unreasonable, but they are taken via a democratic process to which those in our families who came to this country “swore or affirmed” to – unless your ancestors came as accountants on Mayflower or as slaves (or as prisoners to AU).
Anyone is free to get out of the contract and go to a Cuba or to a North Korea.

TU > how much viral load would there be floating around without ventilation and what % is rendered non-viable or is expelled altogether

Rather than relying on the studies, I did tests myself using air quality monitor:
A fully closed small office with 6 computer seats and reasonable ventilation: CO2 level stays normal with 1 person, starts going up after 10 minutes with 2 people. With one door open to an internal corridor, stays normal with 3 people. PPMs stayed low in all cases (except when there was a BBQ outside), that is this particular HVAC was filtering something out, but HVAC outside air intake is low.

A shul with 10 people with place for 40 – CO2 goes up with HVAC and everything closed. Is normal with a door and 3 windows half-open.

This adds – just opening the door to the corridor helps.

It is possible. As my daughter said 1.5 years ago: “if everyone in the country stayed at home for 2 weeks, this will be finished”. Then, she corrected herself “the whole world”…

But the question also is: if a reasonable democratic government selects a policy, are we allowed to disregard it because we disagree with part of it. If there is, say, a vaccine mandate, are we allowed to forge a document to go do a mitzva?

The question is really “what is the right thing to do”, not “what we can get away with”. Because, if Hashem does not agree with us, there is no point in trying to get to the minyan when shaarei shamayim are closed.

2scents, Syag – prolonged contact seems to be more dangerous.

A simple explanation, not sure whether it captures the whole phenomenon: a person gets initial load, immune system starts reacting. Now, it is a race – virus propagating deeper and doing it’s job or immunity building up. So, the more initial load is, the more chances that the virus will win over immunity. There are a lot of secondary indicators of this: cases at home; increase in cases in US South during summer (AC, less outdoors) and in the North during winter (heat, less outdoors).

Other than that, may depend on the lifestyle. I presume that the kids spend most of the day at school, adults at work and in shul and beis midrash. If someone spends the day in the airport, talking to passerbys in the mall, in medical offices, then, of course, they are at risk there also.

But I presume that airports and malls do HVAC and most responsible medical offices (most of our doctors sent us email about that months ago). I helped a couple of mosdos on this, but don’t know what the overall picture is.

I understand that there are 2 issues: influence on the country and economic matters.

On the first, I hope all flavors of religious Jews can come to a common platform. Maybe this requires some accommodation by increasing number of non-Haredim in positions of religious power. This will make the religious coalition stronger, not weaker, by bringing everyone, within halacha, into one bloc.

On the second, it is unsustainable to require unwilling Israeli public to continue paying tzedokah and not complain. When Begin proposed to pay fully for Charedi schools, Rav Schach instructed Charedi politicians not to accept anything beyond the previous partial arrangement. His argument was: at some point, a different government will not be willing to pay, and you will dismantle your own support system already. Not sure why R Schach’s position is rejected now, unless I am not aware that he changed it later on.

how many people are not posting but reading? Site owners might count unique IPs

maskil, I am not advocating movies, just trying to be helpful to those who are looking for some. I agree with Avira on most of his points here.

The sad fact is that current generation is reading less and prefer visual-audio information. Maybe they just want easy information. This is general society trend and it is propagating into Jewish community. So beyond social distancing, we need some medicine and vaccine for it also.

an old joke:
– do you have a book “how to read a book”
– yes, we do
– do you have it on tape?

for the practitioners out here,
so you get calls from people who got sick. These people are indicators that they were in unsafe environment. Especially if these people are from Jewish communities, maybe you can trace then to shul and schools they and their families attend? You can then review wit these schools their safety protocols, starting with most likely problem – ventilation.

Silent movies? Charlie Chaplin?
you don’t need a korbin, you can use software to auto-skip inappropriate scenes

several interesting quotes and footnotes from JOHN D. LOIKE AND MOSHE D. TENDLER Molecular Genetics, Evolution, and Torah Principles, 2006. I am not trying to summarize the paper, just finding interestig references for further research:

genetic drift: Because human beings have only a small number of offspring, not all of the parents’ genes will necessarily be passed on to their progeny. In contrast, species that have many offspring tend to distribute all of the parents’ genes to various progeny of the next generation. Thus, a small surviving population is going to be affected more dramatically by natural disasters (such as earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, or fires) or by war and may not be representative of the original population in its genetic makeup.

Neziv affirms that, prior to Abraham, randomness existed in all areas except when it impacted upon humankind as a whole and threatened the divine plan for the world. However, Abraham brought God “down to earth” to govern humankind with hashgah. haperatit and thus altered the relationship between God and humankind such that hashgahah became a force in the world

Hullin 7b R Hanina v Rava whether Hashem controls every event
See Mo‘ed Katan 28a, where Rava states that “length of life, children and sustenance depend
not on merits but on mazzal.” Also Shabbat 156 ein mazzal le-Yisrael or yesh mazzal le-Yisrael. “Mazzal” here may mean not chance, but natural law

Meam Loez God created man together with the animals to teach him that as far as his body is concerned, he has no advantages over lower animals. His only advantage is his divine soul

Malbim (Gen. 1:25) points out that the description of creation in the Torah presents an evolutionary-like sequence of events whereby each day introduces a qualitatively higher level of life form

Vilna Ga’on comments on Prov. 25:2 that God’s honor demands that we leave hidden what preceded creation and focus only on scientific studies that impact humankind directly. Sa‘adyah Ga’on interprets Eccl. 2:12 as an injunction not to waste time in the study of cosmology, since
the truth will never be revealed and little will be accomplished despite the expenditure of great effort. We propose, however, that these authorities would have supported the study of the genetic basis of evolution had they been aware of the benefits to humankind—both medical and moral—that
emerge from the molecular genetics of evolution. Shla Hagigah 11a) that it is legitimate to inquire into and examine the processes by which the world was created during the first six days

In Eruvin (100b), R. Yohanan states that had the Torah not been given, we would have learned various (good) characteristics from different animals. Animal characteristics are also expressed in
human beings and should be appropriately studied so that the knowledge gained from such study may be utilized to serve the Creator.

Humility: The Talmud (Sanhedrin 38a) states: “Our Rabbis taught:
Adam was created on erev Shabbat [as the last creature created]. Why?
. . . . So that if man becomes arrogant, one can say to him in reminder: the
lowly gnat preceded you in the order of creation of the world!” The
remarkable genetic similarities between human beings and animals—
the fact that each human being is about 99% genetically similar to the
monkey—teaches us that human beings have a propensity to behave like
animals if they are not in possession of morals and values that give them
true human dignity and enable them to realize their z.
elem Elokim.45

akuperman, even later than that. First, there was defense against the foreign influences and antagonists. R Salanter explained going from Lita to Paris: you can’t talk to people who are going down the slope, but you can talk to the ones who already landed at the bottom. I think 1967 war was a big source of teshuva movement in USA, including Chabad activities – turning the view of Judaism from a retreating to a more attractive entity.

This kuruv period might be over by now: looking at statistics of Jewish community, I see very little movement from non-O to O at this point. Growth of O is via pru urvu and decline in non-O is due to the lack thereof and assimilation …

aposhiteyid, I understand your point, still 58% agree with “We should not be easing Covid-19 lockdown restrictions until a substantial proportion of children are fully vaccinated”. Do you think that these people are going to sit in lockdowns themselves and welcome others who ignore the rules? I am not there, so it is hard to judge,

5T > Didn’t China save the Mirrer Yeshiva by allowing it to relocate to Shanghai

Shanghai was occupied by Japanese from 1937 and also had lots of international population – from Western businessmen to Russian refugees from Bolsheviks. Dutch council in Kovno was giving Jews visas to Curaso and Japanese Sugihara used this as a basis to give them transit visas via Japan, that included Shanghai. By some diplomatic miracle (and maybe some financial incentive), Soviets ewre rounding up Jews in Lita and Poland but honored the Jews with these visas to travel freely through, I guess, the same railroad that lead others to labor camps.

Lack of historical animosity is not a good indicator: Jews had a lot of tensions with Poles – but that is where most of us decided to live over centuries, had our own government (Vaad Arba Artzos), and grew large communities. Many countries did not have tension with Jews by simply not allowing them in or expelling them (Spain, England, Russia).

Phil, Right,
disease and vaccines have similar effects on the immune system – they both create antibodies that decrease with time and variants, and they also create B and T cells that do not attack virus immediately upon entering the body but provide some protection against severe disease. There might be differences – which one is waning faster and how much antibodies are created, but differences are smaller than similarities. Protection from B and T-cells are hard to measure, so less is understood about them.

One difference is that disease may do invisible internal damage and thus a second disease may _sometimes_ be really bad. I know people who sneezed first time and ended up in ICU second time.

So, bottom line – if 6-8 months passed after your last immune stimulation by either of them, you should at least measure antibodies and possibly get a vaccine – and behave more responsibly.

Timing is not surprising. Overall, most similar viruses, both disease and vaccines, give protection on the order of a year. People have colds annually … I do have a feeling though how COVID differs from normal colds: neither my wife or me went to big schools or attended tishes. And kids were at home until school. When our oldest kids went to school one year, we evidently encountered “new to us” viruses – and the whole family was sick for several months, a much harder hit than an occasional cold.

> Cavalierly dismisses what is claimed to be a miracle drug

I am not dismissing anything. I am just looking at less controversial ways to help our communities. Even the most miraculous drugs may stop a person from dying, but the virus already did damage to the body. Obviously, prevention is a key. So, we have certain measures that also became controversial for whatever practical and political reasoning. So, I am suggesting people do CO2 monitoring of their mosdos – easy to do, does not involve medical procedures. Could you help people in your community?

coffee > קרקע אינו נגזלת

I was thinking the same question. Is it karka – White House, or is it movable – Obama’s “a phone and a pen”, and I presume also a red button. Also, I think we presume that non-Jews always steel karka so you let them cut the arovos and they seem to agree now (happy indigenous day!): Brits stole White House karka from Indians, Colonists from Brits, Brits burnt it by halakha of a rebellious city.

Ctlawyer, what happens on Jan 20 if an election continues being in legal dispute – supreme-court-ordered recount or revote, electors deadlocked, House deadlocked?

Also, is gezelah a high crime and can a President be impeached for that? probably not of movables

Philosopher, in a year 90% of hospitalized will be vaxxed – because most people will be vaxxed and remaining will get sick one or more times. Over the whole period, 10 times proportionally more non-vaxed will pass away. What exactly are you trying to prove? that it is safer to get sick and die or be immune than to get a vaccine?