Always_Ask_Questions

coffee > you’re not forced to, it’s your choice
> you shouldn’t be forced to “protect someone who doesn’t want it

What happened with being a baal middos and tzedokah? I think you are tripped by the abnormality of the situation. I am sure, if a reasonable poor person approaches you, you are not saying “you should have gone to college”. So, if some poor uneducated souls walk around, you won’t inconvenience yourself? And, again, as they are endangering vulnerable people, you are indirectly doing the same.

Avira, thanks for acknowledging that Chareidi lifestyle is an emergency decree, and it produced measurable results in terms of dedication to Torah and cohesive communities. And I understand your feeling that the dangers are higher and higher.

There is a reason that this is a emergency decree, so Torah/Chachamim would not want us to live like that under normal conditions. So, the next question is to ask honestly – what are the downsides and how can we mitigate them without losing the positive sides. And situation is different: we are 200+ years into modernity, 100 years in USA and Israel, we have more tools to deal with it than 100 years ago.

Ari > many modern orthodox spend even more money on university, major in art history or philosophy
Avira> MO move out of Brooklyn and aren’t as embarrassed to send their children to public school r”l.

I think you guys generalize somewhat. A lot of people go into engineering, computer science, medicine, law. True some elitism is there. A friend who sends kids to YU & Stern to be ina Jewish U, reported that some of them were looked down by classmates by going to an inferior school. There is also an assimilated idea of “kids going away to college” as a bar-mitzva of sort, need to separate the idea of education from “exciting experience” that indeed often ends badly. Sending kids to a local university should be a fine alternative. Some “MO” students, though, are mature enough and thrive in colleges, continuing learning and fully observant. I think you can see in advance which ones can do it.

I am not well versed with the Brooklyn exodus phenomenon, but maybe these people were not able to send kids to public school in NY and now moved to suburbs where they can. So, it is not that they compromised their values now, they just did what they had to do to save their kids from bad public schools while they lived in Brooklyn.

And “rather finance a house” is something to think about.. for people who pay full, or close to full, tuition, Jewish school, whether MO or not, is a major expense (that includes paying part of the tuition for those who do not). If the school also doe not prepare kids for professions at their parents level, it is a very hard proposition to keep kids in such schools.

> The elderly neighbor would be protected if they got the vaccine

coffee, out of 100 neighbors, 10 will be low on their antibodies, and 3 will get sick ….

I am really puzzled my this behavior. We learned over centuries a lot of good practices that we apply without doing a heshbon each time whether it is necessary: don’t sneeze on people, wash your hands before eating (what is percentage of food with E-coli?!), stopping on a red light (what is percentage that someone will walk at you or police hiding nearby), saying hello (what is percentage that are depressed and really need a hello), wearing tzitzis (what is a chance you are going to “follow your eyes” while on a shopping trip), wearing shoes (what is a chance there is glass on the floor)

RW, Hashem sent this plague, we need to deal with that and use it as a source of teshuva.

Consider many things that you were doing routinely, now they might have small risk associated with them, so you may want to re-think: should you be going to restaurants as you did before? which asifas are worth attending? which travel is essential? which meetings can be done online? you now have a good excuse to avoid unproductive things you were doing before.

there were a lot of small and large changes in the society, such as local ordinances allowing restaurants to occupy sidewalks, Trump’s enabling Medicare payments for tele-medicine, current Florida decision to allow whole districts to use vouchers to avoid “mask bullying”.

> what antisemitic source did I quote.

Thai-German Dr

Enigma did not provide relevant information, except for 2 months in 1941 about mass killing at the beginning of invasion into USSR. After Churchill started talking about atrocities there (without mentioning Jews specifically), Germans stopped transmitting thee reports on the radio.

in general, Roosevelt ignored a number of important enigma reports. There was internal rivalry between Army and Navy departments that were presenting him these reports, and they did not often register enough.

coffee > I’m not worried about the unvaxxed they should worry about themselves

What is the halakha about this? You don’t have to help the donkey if the owner is not helping, but I think we are still obligated to help our fellow Jews. To what extent? And, as I mentioned, they are a threat to immunocompromised vaxed people, if they come in direct contact with them.

philosopher, this is called random sampling:
you select some of the tests and do additional analysis on them. Delta is 97% in US, 100% in UK, 91% in Israel, 68% in Canada. With such overwhelming numbers, hard to make a mistake.

here are arrivals to FLL in 2019, closest I could match Common’s travel pattern:
so, spirit is cancelled at 1% more than Delta. So, add 1% to the price comparison in favor of delta
and use these funds to buy a new ticket when a flight is cancelled. congrats, Common, on a good investment. So, aside from the flexibility, there is nothing wrong with Spirit, so hopefully ew resolved this motzi shem ra. Note: I once used frontier for business travel as it had a red eye to take me right from one meeting to another. Looked weird in a suit, with other people not bothering to dress up for a $40 flight… the only consolation was saving money for the client.

% on time, % canceled
southwest 82 1.8
spirit 80 1.6
delta 80 0.4
united 74 0.9
AA 72 1.8
jetblue 72 1.2
frontier 71 1.6

coffee, upon request for 2019:
Spirit 79, Jetblue 73, Frontier 72, Southwest 80, American 77, Delta 85

so, your perception does not much the data. Possibly something wrong with the data.
Only half-joking: maybe we need to look at longer delays and comparable routes. Also, airlines may on purpose plan for longer trips to avoid being called on lateness.

Feel free to check out other stats. The data is by DoT BTS.

Good example how perceptions do not always match data even in a simple case. Forget about COVID…

the last word, whatever your feelings are, it is somewhat strange to put Poland in the same line as Germany here.

I do not disagree w/ Common’s sentiment, just want to make sure we are not getting used in some other nefarious political campaign. For example, a lot of Jewish (often justified) criticism happen to go against former Soviet satellites – Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, while they still had or have issues with the Bear nearby. This is a re-run. In 19203-s, Jews were very active in newly created small countries between Germany and Soviet Russia. They appealed to League of Nation to protect their minority rights (as well as other minorities including Germans and Russians). There is a book published in Israel in 1950s by surviving Latvian politicians. They lament that they were so excited fighting those governments and only later realized that they were pawns in the hands of Nazis and Soviets who sought to weaken and eventually occupy these countries. Their first realization was when Nazis started prosecuting Jews and they appealed to the same department of the League as usual – and got a cold response that “German Jews are not a minority registered by the LofN” …

So, the same now – do we condemn for old sins or support in current struggle, say, Ukraine, that has a Jewish President and is partly occupied by Russia.

Avram, I agree that the current question is: to what degree immunity by vaccine or disease w/ previous strains are effective against Delta, so old results are not appropriate any more.

Two things to note:
1) growing number of cases now affects everyone who was not vaccinated. I hear again, unfortunately, of people in dire state. You may want to check with people in your circle, esp, anyone over 40 and with any kind of health conditions, whether they are vaccinated. And I would not count on a mild case to provide protection, unless confirmed by recent antibody test.

2) it is clear that unvaccinated are threat to vaccinated, and government is not there yet. There are lots of unvaccinated workers in nursing homes and any other facilities for elderly. Check with your relatives and friends where they are. Maybe get them a 3rd vaccine without waiting for CDC.

Syag, simple reading is that Hashem would not give us mitzvos that can hurt us. And I am asking if someone could look up what is the definition of danger here.

There is definitely time for mesiras nefesh during the time of prosecution, but my sense of this Gemora is that Hashem does not give us mitzvos that their ordinary performance is bad for us. There are extra-ordinary examples of, say Rabbi Chaninah making the snake bite him and the snake dies, but I don’t think we are called to emulate him.

Sukkah 32 – we reject s possible candidate for Hadas because it is poisonous because darkei Torah are darkei Naom. So, those who think we should fulfil mitzvos by doing things that are dangerous for your health, please review rishonim at this page – maybe they allow such behavior under some conditions.

yes, from Germans during WW2 and from Russians during WW1 and WW2. As I said, I fully understand your emotions an do not disagree. Still, not all Germans, Russians and even more Poles or Hungarians were involved in atrocities … Would you hold, for example, Frau Merkel accountable – when she went to such length protecting Syrian refugees (I am not touching here on the wisdom of her policy, just on her sentiment here)

Health > , I can’t understand why the Government is only pushing Vaccinations.

Current gov is not pushing anything much. They continue using vaccines they got from Trump, and working on getting a new head of FDA. This is a difficult task tht they hope to accomplish soon.

The argument for focusing on vaccines that we became a society of stupid. The solution works when it is automated and does not require human effort. People read fbook instead of books freely available at the libraries. They buy 1-click from amazon things they could have bought years ago from a wholesale store 30 minutes away. If you manage to convince people to get to a CVS for a vaccine, you achieved a lot. Many other complimentary efforts require a human effort from public or doctors, it is hard. Some doctors in advanced hospitals do not order antibody test for vaccine immunity because CDC does not recommend and the hospital system does not allow ordering. No kidding. Some of the medicines are not used fully because the protocol of using them ina hospital is too complicated.

Re: your protocols (in addition to the vaccine, I presume), it is called “multi layered defense”, is used in all militaries, including defense against nuclear or any other mass attacks. For example, Israelis use Iron Dome, but also sirens to tell population to hide, and Arrow for other types of missiles. This is what Yaakov does before meeting Esav.

So, at minimum, people should continue SD to whatever level they can do, keep ventilation up, eat vitamins, exercise, and daven.

ari-free > it is sad that instead of being proud of trump for pushing out the vaccines in record time b

I agree. I don’t think the “kooks” fully represent Trump voters. I see in sentiments in other places that
middle America gets it now, saying like “while there are lots of things I did not like about Trump, I liked xxxx”. I wonder whether one of the reasons that people started partying like in roaring 1920s is that Biden is always declaring victory (as Trump also often did), but there is no daily pushback from media and people sense the difference. You may not be watching MSNBC, but you talk to someone who talked to someone who does. Sentiments propagate like viruses.

Could you imagine daily headlines if under Trump vaccination rate would fall down like now – it will US falling behind Germany one day, against Spain another day .. instead, they may write “vaccination rates started going up for 2 weeks ago” – when the rates barely moved from 0.17% of population a day to 0.21%, comparing to 1% that many countries sustained for several months.

Or, if Trump would not have an FDA head _candidate_ for 8 months. instead, we are told – it is hard to find someone who is qualified and also wants the job and also is not objected by progressives and by moderates … so, it takes Biden longer to fill a job, than for Trump t develop vaccines. Just think, what would be happening if Delta would have arrived and vaccines would be still in development or waiting for authorization? (FYI – FDA says it started working “24/7” on full authorization in August after Delta arrived – so, they were 8/5 before, I guess)

> Buy the k95 masks if you want to actually protected but being in a room with someone with covid and you have the same chance of getting covid whether it is with or without the mask.

I agree that K95 are better if you choose to be in the room with someone for some time. Note that rooms can be made safer with open doors/windows/vents. In my tests with 2 people in a small room with 6 work places, having regular vents does not help, but just opening a door to a corridor solves the problem (CO2 level goes back almost outside level, that is air circulates out).

>> “As I explained above, I have daas Torah that rejects a modern idea of Daas Torah and clings to more traditional Yiddishkeit,”

> No idea what that means.

It means I have learnt from a respected Rav, not some extreme activists, that Daas Torah is not in the Talmud (yes, he heard of Emunat Chachamim), and most times I am asking a non-trivial life Shaila (rather than a refernce to Sh’A), I am told that he is giving me an advice, not a psak. In truth, I get similar non-psak from the pro-Daas-Torah Rav. So, if I accept Daas Torah, I will be not accepting what I learned from my Teacher. I am really in a tough spot.

> theres no real reason to add the BY part other than to tie it to the context.

there is. They were teaching kids that “modern” is a swear word and kids would look what humros are not done in the house, instead of helping their mother. If your BY is not affecting kids like that, that is great.

Thanks, I see the message here is that a low self-esteem person would see himself disrespected even when you do everything equally. If you divide a chicken in two parts, and give him one, he might still think that you are eating a bigger and tastier part. You pay for 2 rooms in the hotel, and your slave/employee thinks that you have a luxury suite. Maybe, divide the chicken and ask him to choose the part. Let employee order the rooms for everyone himself.

Resident, there is logic in your words, but part of the consideration is risk of exposure. The usual reason for extra testing of vaccines is that it is given to healthy population, of which only a small number will get exposed to a virus (think, Ebola or Yellow Fever).

In a case of a pandemic, when the pandemic is raging and those people who are at exposure (college, HS students in large groups, in poorly ventilated rooms, for example) might have say 30% chance of exposure or more. That is, you need to compare 1-to-1, or 1-to-3 risk/benefit from the virus v. risk from vaccine. Vaccine is developed by certified Western scientists, virus was developed by a team of bats and batmen. Vaccine is tested for extra safety, virus attacks your organs. Most of this is kal vahomer in favor of vaccine.

The only consideration might be an overdose. Vaccines had combined Phase 1/2 to test several doses, and then one shot to pass Phase 3 in time to save lives. I suspect that higher doses were used in order to pass the test for sure. Maybe, we should have had even more Phase 3s with different doses… Moderna just published that 1/2 and even 1/4 of doses seem to be effective, and this might be an approach to vaccinate more people in the world. “1/2 dose now is better than full does a year later”. Similarly, ongoing tests on children are using smaller doses. I see no reason why the smaller doses should not be used for any young person. There is also research showing that increasing gap between doses reduces side effects. I wish we could have voted to keep Pres Trump and his team to deal w/ Op Warp to sort all these issues out, while Pres Biden fights climate change and other sheidim.

Syag, thanks for trying. CAPS do not seem to help. I zoomed in further. Same ting.

in law, there are 2 parts – facts and opinions. I hope we agree that it is not OK to endangering yourself and other people. You simply disagree with me on facts. OK, as I said, my town seems not to hold at the same level as yours. I am grappling how to deal with people in my town who play frum, even if they had friends and relatives sick or died from COVID. If considerations of previous generations are not impressive to you, and you need direct guidance, Avi K just quoted above a contemporary Rav who is well versed in medicine.

> How do you measure your string or the diagonl of the square?

By the string! How do you measure “1”?! same way. We are talking lengths, not abstract numbers.
Yes, 3 for Pi is often good enough, except in the Rav Yohanan’s puzzling statement.

Greeks were very disturbed when they realized that there are irrational numbers (I think it was sqrt(2)). I don’t think Jews have same concerns about rationality of the world. Hashem is One, the rest can be counted approximately. (paraphrasing “In G-d we trust, everyone else pays cash”)