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@torahvaluesoverparty What @refoelzeev said. Also the doctors that have been prescribing it before COVID-19 becomes symptomatic reported a 5% drop in hospitalizations. Which is useful and helpful, but too small of a number to rely on. Please get vaccinated.
There were several double-blind studies on HCQ. Several repeated Dr. Zelenkos drug cocktail. The most positive outcome was a 5% decrease in hospitalizations for COVID-19 patients. Dr. Zelenko himself never performed a proper peer reviewed study.
There exists multiple medications and procedures to help with COVID-19 and the medical establishment is scrambling for anything. If HCQ+Zinc worked as well as people on here claim it does, it would have been standard months ago.
There are a lot of frum people with an extremely dangerous mindset. They believe that the vaccines are more dangerous and less effective than HCQ+Zinc when the reverse is true. This means that COVID-19 will continue to spread and endanger our oilom if we don’t educate people on the matter.
Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer both condemned Omar’s statements as anti-Semitic, as did multiple left wing news sources. Omar apologized and in the several years since has mostly been quiet about Israel.
Greene never even acknowledged her comment, forget apologizing. And although she was condemned by right and left wing media, there was only a few murmurs from her GOP compatriots.
@ujm Relying on rich parents for money shows a chisaron in emunah. If an individual requires a life where he doesn’t have to work and neither does his wife, then he should have the emunah that Hashem will give it to him. How do you think so many kollel families in Eretz Yisroel manage? What if the father-in-law makes a bad business decision and loses his money, leaving the man stuck with no prospect for a job and a wife he needs the finer things? Money disappears, Torah is l’Netzach Nitzachim.
It’s Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous quote “You can’t cry FIRE in a crowded theater and claim freedom of speech”. Social media has given everyone a megaphone and it is the responsibility of the owners to ensure the megaphone doesn’t land in the hands of a fire crier.
So are Republican Jews responsible for terrorist attacks that come because of the lack of peace between Israel and the Palestinians?
I personally feel that they should have kept WB & Gaza the way it was before.
What’s “before”? When they were Jordan and Egypt? I guess I can sort of get behind that, provided there were adequate security measures in place and Yerushalayim was still in Israel.
@MadeAliya
While the ‘endgame’ is huge political discussion, Israel is mostly fine with the status-quo. The problem is the Palestinians who can’t stop whining and pull themselves together.
That’s my problem. The status-quo stinks and I don’t think Israel is fine with it. The status-quo means that the West Bank and Gaza are in a state of limbo, not part of Israel but not part of another state either. And I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the Palestinians to keep whining as long as they are stuck like that. Israel should have a plan as to what to do as soon as we can get a decent Palestinian non-terrorist leadership. But they don’t have a plan.
@CharlieHall “New York can be doing worse” isn’t exactly a shining endorsement of Cuomo. After botching the initial COVID-19 response causing nearly half the initial deaths in the US. Then encouraging vaccine distributors to throw out extra doses by threatening anyone who dared vaccinate someone who isn’t in the nebulous “Group 1A”. He will have to do a lot better than 33rd percentile before you will get people to stop bashing him.
You can, if you want to. But it basically means getting off the Internet entirely. Most non-Google websites use Amazon Web Services to some extent. And online retailers take advantage of Amazon’s infrastructure.
Not endorsing Biden’s plan or anything, but I would like to ask a question for everyone here. What’s Israel’s endgame?
I mean it makes sense to say that you can’t negotiate with terrorists, but it also makes no sense to keep the West Bank in a state of permanent limbo. Do you want the West Bank to be completely part of Israel and give all of its residents citizenship? Or do you want to give the whole thing back to Jordan? There has to be some sort of plan, right? We can’t just keep pretending that everything is fine just as long as the terrorism is kept to a minimum.
Sorry to sound so much like a smolani, but it just bothers me that no one seems to be thinking long term about what needs to happen.
@mbachur (AKA Coffee Addict) and @trybepolite You’re still relying on YWN standards as to what they consider appropriate, and those standards may not be the same as yours. So my advice would be not to rely on the frumkeit standards of anonymous people on the Internet. If you want your eyes to stay 100% pure and kodesh, stick with seforim. Besides, the video in question was hardly problematic. If that’s what you take issue with, you definitely need to stop leaving the Beis Medrash.
YWN also slips up on occasion and prints stuff that go against their standards too. There was an article some time ago that quoted Louis Farrakhan (may Hashem bring him to teshuva soon) and used language that is certainly not something you want your children reading.
Rav Aryeh Carmell ZT”L wrote at length about how “ecofriendliness” is part of the Torah and we cannot disrespect our environment. I suggest we all read his essays on the matter before proceeding further.
Though I do admit that modern “green” movements are mostly about making people feel better about themselves. Even if everyone in the US would use reusable shopping bags, the impact on the environment would be minimal. The main things we need to worry about are big governments and companies that account for 90% of the world’s pollution.
If you are worried about seeing stuff on the Internet that goes against what a ben or bas Yisrael should see on the Internet, then you should not be in the Internet even with a filtered connection.
As a side note, there is one Yid that was pardoned who is being mistakenly referred to in the media as an Orthodox Jew.
Edited – I am not sure that information fulfills the requirements for posting
@Health Dr. Levine grew up mostly secular, with little to no concept that Yiddishkeit should take precedence over whatever society deems morally correct this week. I think Tinuk SheNishba is the perfect description.
@daas-yochid I don’t want to put you on the spot, I just like to know where people stand on certain issues when having a discussion with them. If you don’t want to answer, that’s fine and good day.
@health Look up RASHI and the meforshim on that mitzvah. It’s not clear that Dr. Levine is being oiver it. Besides, how many mechalelei Shabbos and achilei tarfus did Trump have in the White House? Where’s your condemnation on him because of them?
There were literal Nazis and other anti-Semites at the Charlottesville rally. Instead of condemning them, Trump just kind of gave a wishy-washy response about how there were good people there too.
Umen. I may not like the guy, but I do appreciate the things he’s done for us. And I do recognize that it’s unlikely many of these things would have gotten done under a Democrat.
@commonsaychel I am unaware of any aveiros that Dr. Levine publicly flaunts. And if you can list any, I’m certain I can find an equal or greater number of Jewish Trump appointees that have also committed aveiros.
@avram-in-md My supporting example in this particular comment was Israel which I was told some incorrect information about. My supporting evidence is the overwhelming opinion of Da’as Torah and secular medicine and the indisputable facts (yes indisputable. No, token handful of “expert” opinions on a quasi related matter doesn’t count) that the dangers of the vaccine pale in comparison to the dangers of allowing COVID-19 to continue unchecked.
@commonsaychel According to @health, the only criteria we should be looking at when discussing a goys morality is whether they are oiver on mitzvos B’nei Noach. I don’t believe Dr. Levine has been, at least not publicly (unless there’s some eating the leg of a live cow I’m unaware of) so there’s not a problem in that regard.
@daas-yochid Before I respond to that, can I ask a few unrelated question? What is QAnon? Did NASA land on the Moon?
@avram-in-md Avereimele, you are pulling the same old schtick of ignoring my main point to focus on some narische technical inaccuracies. Fine I was wrong about Eretz Yisroel. Nu, what about the vaccination program?
@health So now the one and only criteria on who is a candidate sent from Shomayim and who is literally pure Re’shoim is based on how many Aveiros Chmuros they are oiver based on a limited view of Mitzvos Bnei Noach? I can make the same arguments that the Republicans refused to act on COVID thus being oiver on Hariga. Or having a First Lady who was openly a mezaneh.
I implore you, look at what Rav Shach ZT”L would say when he would speak on the eve of a big election. Neither party is “good”, we just have to daven that whoever wins will at least be good for the Yidden in some ways.
@Health At this point it’s a cry wolf scenario. The hard-core Trump believers have been saying for months that any day Biden will be forced to concede. Now we are down to one day and we’re talking literally a neis niglah to prevent…. what exactly? These goyim from having control as opposed to the other goyim?
@syag-lchochma Well if you already had COVID I don’t see the purpose of getting the vaccine. But you should schedule one for some time in six months which is about when antibodies start to wear off. And Israel extended the lockdown, but they are already seeing a decrease in COVID severity that they are attributing to the vaccine.
@syag-lchochma Research shows that 10% of people who get COVID experience severe symptoms and about 10% of people who get the vaccine experience mild symptoms. If the millions who got the vaccine had instead gotten COVID, there would have been a few thousand vaccine deaths already, plus hospitals overrun with vaccine injuries. Instead, look at Eretz Yisroel. For the first time in weeks, the strain on the hospitals is easing up. Because so much of the country has been vaccinated.
I don’t believe there are two sides to this issue anymore than I believe in their being two sides to flat Earth theory or whether Donald Trump is a reptile. What I believe in is the Torah. And everyone I know and know of who is a Talmid Chacham is promoting getting a COVID vaccine. So either stand on the side of Torah, or stand aside.
@Health I don’t see it as being clear at all. I see a man who has committed numerous acts which are condemned by the Torah, even if most aren’t to the extent that would make him chayiv misa. I see a man who’s morals and public policies change on a whim, depending on who would vote for him. I see a party willing to support such a man. I see a government that has near-unanimously decided that all sorts of to’eyvos are OK. And I have yet to see a good Torahdik reason why either party is any better.
@syag-lchochma Even if you’re healthy there’s very good reasons to get vaccinated. Vaccines, like masks and social distancing, are more about preventing others from getting the virus than yourself. Sure you may not mind a week long fever followed by months of coughing, fits, and loss of smell, but it’s unfair that immune compromised people should have to perpetually lock down and suffer because of that.
@trybepolite Not quite true. It takes 10 years for a vaccine to get approval. In general, to test a new drug on tens of thousands of people, there needs to be years of back and forth between the pharmaceutical company and the FDA with tons of chemical, animal, and small-scale people testing. Because testing on tens of thousands of human beings is dangerous. By the time a vaccine is ready to be tested on a large scale, there’s generally only about a year or two until it gets approved, most of which is spent figuratively waiting on line. Trump’s Operation Warp Speed allowed companies to move to large scale human testing much faster by skipping many in between steps. This caused issues that you usually don’t see in testing, such as the Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine which gave some people nervous disorders.
We have been cautious. We know the side effects. And right now the side effects are looking an awful lot safer than COVID-19.
@ujm While I understand the concern, you are starting off with a false assumption. We aren’t the guinea pigs. There already were guinea pigs. Tens of thousands of people have tested the vaccine, and after many months the worst side effects were a few weeks of feeling bad. On the flip side, an equal number of people did not get the vaccine (the control group) and many more of them fell ill in a much more severe manner (COVID-19).
I agree with @charliehall. Although all the effects may not yet be known, it is a near-certainty that the dangers of not taking the vaccine far outweigh the dangers of taking it.
As for demographics that may be in danger, such as kids and people with certain illnesses, the vaccine isn’t approved for them and they won’t be taking it until it is.
I welcome being corrected, but I still fail to see how we can classify an avaryan as being a good person just because there’s a different avaryan who may be worse.
@health Mishkav Zachar is a mahlokes if it’s a mitzvas bnei Noach. Same with a married man being mezaneh. There is no question that the latter is morally wrong, even for goyim, both according to the Torah and according to the current secular social systems. So I don’t see why we are making a fuss.
@ujm I believe that Rav Moshe ZT”L wrote in Iggors Moshe that abortion is bad, but sometimes necessary for medical reasons so we should not oppose building abortion clinics because it may endanger pregnant women who are in a state of sakonos nefashos. While not explicit endorsement of RvW, it’s certainly not the Xtian or OANN approach to the matter either.@always_ask_questions NY State has an extra layer of difficulty. As we all know, once the vaccine is defrosted and diluted, it’s only usable for six hours. If on any given day on any given clinic everyone who was on schedule to receive a dose gets one, there’s a question of what to do with the remaining doses. Some clinics chose to hand them out, first come first serve, so they don’t go to waste. But then Cuomo got all angry at that one place, so now a lot of clinics are forced to throw out vaccinations lest they face they ire of the NY State government by allowing people to skip the line.
@ujm and @jude You are missing something big when it comes to currency value. A dollar is valuable because billions of people assign value to it. I can walk into any store in the US and my dollar bill will be accepted there. Crypto doesn’t have that value. The vast majority of people do not accept payment in Etherium or Dogecoin in exchange for goods or services. It’s value comes almost entirely from the fact that people like to invest, buy, and sell it. (The few people who do accept it as currency are overwhelmingly drug and gun dealers, relying on the inherent anonymity of blockchain.) That alone makes it an extremely volatile system who’s value is very unstable.
@health If Rav Moshe ZT”L was as strong against abortion as people claim he was, he would have made a big deal to oppose Roe v. Wade. Instead he did the opposite. Rav JB Soleiveitchik ZT”L was much more machmire on abortion than Rav Moshe and did oppose it.
And I do believe it’s a machlokes if Trump was oiver on Giluy Arayos, and a different machlokes if Buttigieg was. So both are in the same boat.
All this is besides the point. What changes have the GOP done to stop things like DADT or overturn Obergefell v. Hodges? What has Trump said in opposition to things like the NY state law of partial birth abortions? Just because far-right conservative commentators (even some frum ones) like to pretend that the Republicans in DC are on the side of morality as defined by the Torah, does not make it true.
I know a bit about it.
Essentially it’s gambling. All crypto investments are extremely high risk and subject to massive peaks and valleys on any given day. There’s no guarantee even the most stable of cryptos won’t crash tomorrow or if the most popular, like BTC, will have another skyrocket increase in price. There are “farms” that own massive percentages in certain cryptos and they could at any point decide the price by either buying or selling a massive amount.
As for their price themselves, cryptocurrencies never really became useful currencies and are still essentially only valued at what people will pay for them, not at what they will buy. Like BTC can take hours to approve a transaction (“get your transaction signed and on the ledger” in crypto speak) and it’s so volatile you won’t find many vendors willing to take that sort of risk. You can buy something for $100 with 0.001 Bitcoins but by the time the transaction goes through, the vendor will receive 0.001 BTC but it’s now worth only $75.
And there are a lot of con artists out there making bank off of it. It’s how the old adage goes, in a gold rush the only ones making money are those selling shovels.
What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t invest in crypto. Maybe if you have a few hundred or thousand dollars you don’t mind potentially losing, it’s not the worst idea. But definitely don’t view it as a good investment.
@Health Who said anything about the Sheva Mitzvos? I’m talking about basic immorality. And are you disagreeing with Rav Moshe Feinstein regarding abortion?
@syag-lchochma True. But the fact that there are precious few Republicans that believe that Trump won the election makes him the lone voice of insanity shouting in the wilderness.
@Health You think this country isn’t already S’dom? I fail to see why the immoral anti-marriage, anti-family, and anti-decency practices of President Trump are better than the practices of someone like Pete Buttigieg.
@syag-lchochma Considering the total blackout of information regarding vaccine distribution, even to healthcare workers, can you excuse me if I take every claim with a massive grain of salt?
@jack-nadler @jackpot Unfortunately, Biden seems to think that killing a dead duck is more important than saving lives.@huju I believe Rav Hirsch ZT”L has a lot to say about the term “Reform”. The Reform invented the term to describe themselves, even though the movement is the opposite of a reformation. I don’t have an issue using it because I think it’s clear that the term describes the religion of Reform Judaism and not the idea that they are reformed Jews.
I’m going to go with what @catch-yourself said. The schools aren’t the issue, the issue is where people pretend that COVID is over. Also in my community (which may be the same one) schools are open, but very carefully with mask wearing and minimizing class mixing. The virus is spreading a little bit through the schools, but not in a worse way than anywhere else. The major upticks still seem to be from the people who have no problem dancing indoors at chasunas with 800 other people, none of them with masks or social distancing.
Congress is not dealing with the “steal” because there is nothing to deal with. They are dealing with a madman who incites mobs from his position of power while spouting lies that even his most ardent supporters don’t believe.
Everyone is all worked up because the current social climate thrives on getting people worked up. Specifically, promoting that you believe in an ideology and getting people worked up to fight those who oppose it is the best way to drum up support for yourself.
Most of the media doesn’t like Republicans, and they found that Democrats can get worked up really quickly if you find them an enemy so they promoted Trump as The Sutun incarnate.
The Republicans in turn got their constitutes worked up by pretending that Trump is what everyone wanted all along and everyone is a victim because of that.
Trump lost the election and was plummeting towards irrelevancy, so he worked up his supporters into following a farce.
The Democrats realized that they can get their constitutes worked up more if they gang up to fight a lame duck than they would if they did something useful, like fix the mess that is the COVID vaccine.
And here we are. Who knows where we’ll be next week?
There is a Yehi Ratzon for doctors to say when performing a procedure. Perhaps if you’re getting the vaccination from a frum person you should ask for he/she to say that. But a bracha is a big deal, it uses the Shem Hashem. It’s not so simple to just “say a bracha”. And you certainly should not pasken based on CR whether or not a bracha should be said.
I think there’s something like 17 versions of “Pandemic” out there. It’s a very popular game. I never played it, but I’ve played “Forbidden Island” by the same author which is a similar game. It’s co-operative, everyone works together to stop global pandemics by traveling around the world, building hospitals, and researching vaccines.
The latest versions to come out are a series called “Pandemic: Legacy” which are a fascinating new idea in board games (and great way to get peoples money). Every time you play the game, the rules change permanently. There are cards that are added or removed, stickers put into the instruction manual, and little boxes with new pieces to add. And the rules are different depending on how each game turns out. After ten games the rules stop changing and you end up with a unique board game that no one else has. Then they came out with three sequels to “Pandemic: Legacy” that tell an ongoing story about the pandemic so every year you have to buy the next game.
@charliehall Any particular region or era of history? I think I have a bit of a phobia of history books from years of my father insisting that I read “something intelligent” (which could mean anything from a 100 page “Mary Queen of Scots for Young Readers” or Benzion Netanyahu’s mammoth “The Origins of the Inquisition in 15th Century Spain”). Though I do make an exception for Israeli or Jewish history. I prefer science and math for my non-fiction reading.
@syag-lchochma Oh gosh, you name it. Chess and Rummikub are never off the table (literally). Our latest acquisition was “Smallworld Underground” which is a ton of fun. When the kids were off for the pandemic, I started a game of “Dungeons & Dragons” with them which is an experience I firmly believe every parent must have.I love cooking too, but I have a bad habit of experimenting and making a mess of things so I’m banned from the kitchen for anything other than garlic bread and veggie omelettes, both of which I’m great at.
Board games! I forgot about board games! I am a board game addict and it’s getting passed on to the next generation. Good thing they are big and expensive so we don’t buy too often.
Libby Lazewick is probably one of my favorite frum fiction authors, maybe because she writes what she knows and (usually) doesn’t try to mimic goyishe technothrillers and mysteries.
@syag-lchochma What type of books? My reading has slowed dramatically in direct correlation to how much attention my kids require. I like all types. Goyish, Jewish, fiction, non-fiction. (But the only Jewish fiction I read is by Marcus Lehmann.) My guilty pleasure is pre-teen science fiction/fantasy which I usually “borrow” from my kids.