The past week’s uptick in infections, including in neighborhoods with Haredi and Hasidic populations in New York City and its suburbs, brought attention to the Orthodox community’s response to COVID-19. This recent increase needs to be taken seriously. Our communal behavior has to match our communal prayer.

 

AGUDAH TO NYC: TREAT US WITH RESPECT

---

"Will You Shut Up, Man"

Jews across the world observed Yom Kippur. It was a day filled with prayer, introspection and commitment to improve. On more than a half-dozen occasions, we asked God to suppress plague and disease. These entreaties took on an added resonance this year, with the plague of COVID-19 having already taken the lives of more than 200,000 Americans. The fervor of our prayers was deepened by our ability to picture relatives, friends, neighbors and colleagues who have been felled by this dreaded virus. Anyone who ministers to a congregation knows that too often there is a disconnect between what we pray for and our behavior. We sincerely seek the end of the virus, but we are not yet doing all that we can to make that happen. The past week’s uptick in infections, including in neighborhoods with Haredi and Hasidic populations in New York City and its suburbs, brought attention to the Orthodox community’s response to COVID-19. This recent increase needs to be taken seriously. Our communal behavior has to match our communal prayer. Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health experts have pointed to wearing a mask as the single most important step one can take to prevent the spread of the virus. There is no reason that mask compliance in the Orthodox community shouldn’t mirror that seen elsewhere across New York. As with many other matters contemplated on Yom Kippur, we must acknowledge that we need to do better and that we need to do more. We must commit to doing better and doing more. For our own health, and for the continued good health of all those we come into contact with, including our rabbis, teachers, parents and grandparents. New York’s public health officials also need to reflect on their approach. Shaming is not a legitimate or effective tool. No other community is singled out and stereotyped as the Orthodox are. That too needs to change. Understanding the roots of the complacency that has crept into the community is not the same as justifying it. It is a necessary step toward remedying it. This summer saw day camps and daycare centers running without incident. When overnight camps were banned in New York State, many safely moved their operations to neighboring states. Synagogues resumed services. All this may have led to a false sense of security about a potential second wave. But instead of communication, the city’s Department of Health countered with criticism. Fauci also offers a model of how public health officials should act during a pandemic. Engagement and building trust is what is necessary and what works. There is also lingering distrust because of the different way the city treated the several hundred Hasidic mourners at an outdoor funeral at the very end of April and the far larger crowds righteously protesting the horrific murder of George Floyd a month later. The Hasidim were singled out for harsh criticism by Mayor de Blasio, who called their attendance “absolutely unacceptable.” Those protesting racial injustice were accommodated and encouraged. The point is not to compare the two issues but to highlight why the Hasidic community remains skeptical about whether the city takes their devotion to religious worship, education and ritual as seriously as it takes the priorities of other communities. It also rankles that while the funeral attended by several hundred Hasidim received national attention, little or nothing was written about the funeral of a far better known rabbi, Yaakov Perlow, who died exactly three weeks earlier. He was the head of the Agudath Israel movement, and the school and synagogue he led had thousands of current and former students and worshippers. His funeral was conducted entirely online, and his burial was attended by only a handful of masked and socially distanced immediate family members. Ignoring this funeral while highlighting another creates a distorted view of our community’s conduct and leadership. Here’s one suggestion for a path forward: The city should work with Orthodox leaders to develop and implement a public safety plan. Its mission will not be public relations but public health. Policies can be crafted and the concerns of the community can be addressed before problems arise and ultimatums are issued. To take but one example, if the city and state regularly track the percentage of positive cases, shouldn’t private schools be assessed relative to their size? Isn’t a school with 2,000 students different than a school with 200? Let’s all undertake to set aside the frustrations of the past week and commit to working cooperatively. Together we can demonstrate that we can protect both our spiritual and our physical health. Schick is a former deputy attorney general in New York and the president of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School. Zwiebel is the executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America   https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-how-orthodox-jews-can-attack-covid-20200929-dvjiqgvrkbdhhix5kib5gzfzdi-story.html

This Post is Not an "I Told You So"!

On March 12, 2020, I came out of my self-imposed blog retirement (I'm at my office every work day, except when I'm not), for one reason only! To bring attention to the onslaught of the upcoming pandemic that I believed at the time will bring an untold amount of death to the global population.

 http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2020/03/this-suggests-that-anyone-in-position.html

 I e-mailed my children in January, that the pandemic that started in Wuhan, China was spreading rapidly and would arrive in the USA shortly. I told them to stock up on non-perishable food and water. I begged them not to attend shul on Purim or attend any Purim festivities.

So this is not hindsight; read my blog posts from March 12 forward.

I'm a student of history, and I researched the Pandemic of 1918, and realized how pandemics start and spread.

I basically pleaded with the Jewish community and anyone else that reads my blog to take this seriously, nah, what did I know?

It was the rabbis that knew EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING - they said go to shul on Purim, stay in yeshivas, and even now, pack the shuls on the yomim tovim as Israel goes into full lockdown. The vast majority of Orthodox rabbis are either ignorant of science or anti-science, until they need a doctor!

It is hard to feel pity for idiots, maybe that is a fault of mine, nevertheless, I don't! I do not wish anyone harm, but you choose your own destiny based on your free will!

So, whether I (or you) like it or not, I'm back for the time-being, and I will continue to call matters of life and death to your attention (spiritually or physically), and anything else that I believe is necessary. If I insulted anyone over the past year, -------- you probably deserved it :-)

Wishing almost all a G'mar Chasima Tova.

PM

Why is this happening now?

COVID-19 Update Rabbi Dr Glatt: Why this Tremendous Surge Now all Over Frum Communities?

 

 by Rabbi Aaron E. Glatt, MD

We are again at a crossroads. Both in the Jewish calendar, entering into Yom Kippur, where life and death decisions will be made, and in the world of COVID-19, with a disconcerting continuing rise in cases in our area, where life and death decisions will be made.

“Mi Bamageifa” (and who will die by plague…):

In just the past 24 hours, I have been inundated with numerous pressing shailos from communities all over regarding COVID-19 exposures. Here are but a few of the quarantine questions that Rabbonim and shul presidents have asked me.

“Our Rosh Hashana chazzan said wearing a mask was too difficult. He davened for the amud without one. He developed symptoms and tested positive the following day…”

“Our Rav gave a drasha on Rosh Hashana without a mask. He turned positive the next day…”

“A Rebbi (who was also a chazzan in a shul) did not wear a mask in his school or shul. He turned positive after Rosh Hashana…”

All wanted to know – does everyone in shul / school class need to quarantine?

Speciously, many people remain unconcerned about their spreading COVID-19 and ruining Yom Kippur and Succos for everyone they come into contact with, as evidenced by the laxity in some communities and some individuals regarding masking and distancing compliance. Based on what?

To remove any doubts about the scientific truths to date, these are the undisputed COVID-19 facts.

Worldwide to date:        Cases: 31,672,300;   Deaths: 972,081

United States to date:   Cases:   6,897,661;   Deaths: 200,818

The U.S. this week has an average of 41,490 new COVID-19 cases daily, up 13% from the average seen two weeks ago. That comes to 13 new cases / 100,000 population. At least 27 states are now reporting increased cases compared to just 9 states on September 14. On average, the U.S. is seeing ~ 770 daily deaths, and a model from the University of Washington predicts the U.S. death toll will double to 400,000 before the end of the year. The U.S. accounts for 4% of the world’s population, but has ~ 20% of the world’s deaths from COVID-19. Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, an excellent reputable senior epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, stated: “I think we’re just in the beginning of what’s going to be a marked increase in cases in the fall. And it won’t be just a testing artifact, either. This is real.”

Israel: Sadly, acheinu beis Yisroel has been averaging well over 4,000 new cases daily, a rate of 47 new cases / 100,000, a rate 3.5x the U.S. incidence, a rate higher than any other country in the world at this time. Today there were 6,782 cases. Hospitals in Israel are nearing overload, surpassing the safe number of patients that they are able to care for. Hashem yeracheim.

5 Towns: Each one of the 5 Towns falls in the highest new case incidence numbers for Nassau County. Lawrence holds the number one spot in the County for the last 8 weeks, with Cedarhurst 3^rd, followed by Great Neck 4^th, Woodmere 5^th and Hewlett 6^th. Inwood is 8^th.

Far Rockaway: FR has the distinction, along with 5 other neighborhoods (Midwood, Borough Park, Williamsburg, Kew Gardens and Bensonhurst) of accounting for 20% of all new NYC cases.

How do you think these / our neighborhoods are described in the lay press and by the Department of Health? What type of comments do you think are being made on polite social media, never mind on the dark web and nefarious sites that always besmirch us.

Why is this happening now?

This all “re-started” with the flagrant disregard for scientifically vetted guidelines around weddings and kiddushim, large public gatherings, with many people eating unmasked and in close proximity.

What proof exists, you may ask, that such events indeed cause suffering? Maine public health officials just published a shocking report of an August 7^th wedding in Millinocket, Maine. At the wedding, guests ignored social distancing guidelines and mask recommendations. The results: 135 guests got COVID-19, with 7 guests DYING from this wedded bliss exposure. Do you think that young couple will ever be able to look back happily at what should have been one of the most joyous events in their life, knowing that their “simcha” was the cause of so much misery? This wedding is just one in a list of several studied “superspreader” events in the country over the summer. How many more are still to occur?

Do we all have such a short collective memory of what happened Purim and Pesach? Have we forgotten the numerous funerals and shivah calls that we zoomed? Aren’t we “gomlei chassadim”?

How can any person insist on their ‘right’ to not wear a mask when it will potentially cause a fellow person to die? When it might perpetuate a vile chilul Hashem that our community does not follow public health guidelines? How many yeshivas and shuls have to be publicly quarantined before we realize the bittul Torah and bittul tefillah betzibbur that we have caused?

All of this can still be avoided by following the simple – and not so difficult – halachic obligation to mask and social distance. This statement is based on my conversations with numerous poskim from all aspects of the frum community.

Rabbi Axelrod, shlita, will be giving his inaugural Shabbos Shuva drasha this motzei Shabbos, September 26^th, at 9:00 PM. He asked me to please still give my COVID-19 update Zoom talk before his shiur, which I will do from 8:15 – 8:45 PM this motzei Shabbos. You can join both sessions via:

Zoom at Meeting ID 980 3243 6809; Password: SUMMER2020;

or by phone: 929 205 6099;

or via YouTube link obtainable from yiwoodmerecovidupdate@gmail.com.

https://5townscentral.com/2020/09/24/covid-19-update-rabbi-dr-glatt-why-this-tremendous-surge-now-all-over-frum-communities/?fbclid=IwAR2vp0imNrV71sw955qQjCI0922o94MaWegbInSnkkZb3KoT_0R9FsUV50o

The scope and the devastation of the pandemic reflect bad luck, yes, and a dangerous world, yes, but also catastrophic failures of human foresight, communal will and leadership.

The Pandemic, From the Virus’s Point of View

The career of the coronavirus so far is, in Darwinian terms, a great success story.

 

No sensible person can dispute that Covid-19 is a great tragedy for humanity — a tragedy even in the ancient Greek sense, as defined by Aristotle, with the disastrous ending contingent on some prideful flaw in the protagonist. This time it’s not Oedipus or Agamemnon. This time it’s we who are that cocky protagonist, having brought disaster on ourselves. The scope and the devastation of the pandemic reflect bad luck, yes, and a dangerous world, yes, but also catastrophic failures of human foresight, communal will and leadership.

But look past that record of human failures for a moment, and consider this whole event from the point of view of the virus. Measure it by the cold logic of evolution: The career of SARS-CoV-2 so far is, in Darwinian terms, a great success story.

This now-notorious coronavirus was once an inconspicuous creature, lurking quietly in its natural host: some population of animals, possibly bats, in the caves and remnant forests of southern China. The existence of such a living hide-out — also known as a reservoir host — is logically necessary when any new virus appears suddenly as a human infection.

Why? Because everything comes from somewhere, and viruses come from cellular creatures, such as animals, plants or fungi. (A viral particle isn’t a cell; it’s just a strip of genomic instructions enclosed in a protein capsule — a message in a bottle.) A virus can only replicate itself, function as though it were alive and abide over time if it inhabits the cells of a more complex creature, like a sort of genetic parasite.

Generally, the relationship between virus and reservoir host represents an ancient evolutionary accommodation. The virus persists at a low profile, without causing trouble, without proliferating explosively, and in return it gets long-term security. Its horizons are modest: relatively small population, limited geographical scope.

But this guest-host arrangement is not imperturbably stable, or the end of the story. If another sort of creature comes in close contact with the host — by preying on it, by capturing it or maybe only by sharing the same cave — the virus might be jostled from its comfort zone and into a new situation: a new potential host.

Suddenly it’s like a gaggle of rats that jump ashore from a ship onto a remote island. The virus might thrive in this new habitat, or it might fail and die out. If it happens to thrive, if by chance it finds the new situation hospitable, then it might establish itself not just in the first new individual but in the new population.

It might discover itself capable of entering some of the new host’s cells, replicating abundantly and getting itself transmitted from that individual to others. That jump is called host-switching or, by a slightly more vivid term, spillover. If the spillover results in disease among a dozen or two dozen people, you have an outbreak. If it spreads countrywide, an epidemic. If it spreads worldwide, a pandemic.

Imagine again that gaggle of rats on a previously rat-free island. To their delight, they find the island inhabited by several endemic species of birds, naïve and trusting, accustomed to laying their eggs on the ground. The rats eat those eggs. Soon the island has lost its terns and its rails and its dotterels, but it has an abundance of rats.

Over time, the rats also acquire the ability to dig lizards out of their hiding places amid rocks and logs, and eat them. They develop an improved agility at tree climbing, and eat eggs from birds’ nests up there, too. Now you might as well call the place Rat Island. For the rats, this is a tale of evolutionary success.

If the remote island of habitat is a human being newly colonized by a virus from a nonhuman animal, we call that virus a zoonosis. The resulting infection is a zoonotic disease. More than 60 percent of human infectious diseases, including Covid-19, fall into this category of zoonoses that have succeeded. Some zoonotic diseases are caused by bacteria (such as the bacillus responsible for bubonic plague) or other kinds of pathogen, but most are viral.

Viruses have no malice against us. They have no purposes, no schemes. They follow the same simple Darwinian imperatives as do rats or any other creature driven by a genome: to extend themselves as much as possible in abundance, in geographical space and in time. Their primal instinct is to do just what God commanded to his newly created humans in Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it.”

For an obscure virus, abiding within its reservoir host — a bat or a monkey in some remote region of Asia or Africa, or maybe a mouse in the American Southwest — spilling over into humans offers the opportunity to comply. Not every successful virus will “subdue” the planet, but some go a fair way toward subduing at least humans.

This is how the AIDS pandemic happened. A chimpanzee virus now known as SIVcpz passed from a single chimp into a single human, possibly by blood contact during mortal combat, and took hold in the human. Molecular evidence developed by two teams of scientists, one led by Dr. Beatrice H. Hahn, the other by Michael Worobey, tells us that this most likely happened more than a century ago, in the southeastern corner of Cameroon, in Central Africa, and that the virus took decades to attain proficiency at human-to-human transmission.

By 1960 that virus had traveled downriver to big cities such as Léopoldville (now Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo); then it spread to the Americas and burst into notice in the early 1980s. Now we call it “H.I.V.-1 group M”: It’s the pandemic strain, accounting for most of the 71 million known human infections to date.

Chimpanzees were a species in decline, alas, because of habitat loss and killing by humans; humans were a species in ascendance. The SIVcpz virus reversed its own evolutionary prospects by getting into us and adapting well to the new host. It jumped from a sinking lifeboat onto a luxury cruise ship.

SARS-CoV-2 has done likewise, though its success has occurred much more quickly. It has now infected more than 30 million people, just under half as many as the number of people infected by H.I.V., and in 10 months rather than 10 decades. It’s not the most successful human-infecting virus on the planet — that distinction lies elsewhere, possibly with the Epstein-Barr virus, a very transmissible species of herpesvirus, which may reside within at least 90 percent of all humans, causing syndromes in some and lying latent in most. But SARS-CoV-2 is off to a roaring start.

Now, for purposes of illustration, imagine a different scenario, involving a different virus. In the mountain forests of Rwanda lives a small, insectivorous bat known as Hill’s horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hilli). This bat is real, but it has been glimpsed only rarely and is classified as critically endangered. Posit a coronavirus, for which this bat serves as reservoir host. Call the virus RhRW19 (a coded abbreviation of the sort biologists use), because it was detected within the species Rhinolophus hilli (Rh), in Rwanda (RW), in 2019 (19)

The virus is hypothetical, but it’s plausible, given that coronaviruses are known to occur in many kinds of horseshoe bats around the world. RhRW19 is on the brink of extinction, because the rare bat is its sole refuge. The lifeboat is leaking badly and nearly swamped.

But then a single Rwandan farmer, needing fertilizer for his crops on a meager patch of dirt, enters a cave and shovels up some bat guano. The guano has come from Hill’s horseshoe bats and it contains the virus. In the process of shoveling and breathing, the farmer becomes infected with RhRW19. He passes it to his brother, and the brother carries it to a provincial clinic where he works as a nurse. The virus circulates for weeks among employees of the clinic and their contacts, making some sick, killing one person, while natural selection improves its capacity to replicate within cells of the human respiratory tract and transmit between people.

A visiting doctor becomes infected, and she carries the virus back to Kigali, the capital. Soon it is at the airport, in the airways of people who don’t yet feel symptoms and are boarding flights for Kinshasa, Doha and London. Now you can give the improved virus a different name: SARS-CoV-3. It’s a success story that hasn’t happened yet but very easily could.

Coronaviruses are an exceptionally dangerous group. The journal Cell recently published a paper on pandemic diseases and how Covid-19 has come upon us, by a scientist named Dr. David M. Morens and one co-author. Dr. Morens, a prolific author and keen commentator, serves as senior scientific adviser to the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci. His co-author on this paper is Dr. Fauci.

The paper says, among other things, that coronaviruses harbored in various mammalian species “may essentially be preadapted to human infectivity.” Not just bats but other mammals — pangolins, palm civets, cats, ferrets, mink, who knows what — contain cells that are susceptible to the same viral hooks that allow coronaviruses to catch hold of some human cells. Existing within those reservoir hosts may prepare the viruses nicely for infecting us.

The closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2 is a virus discovered seven years ago, in a bat captured at a mine shaft in Yunnan Province, China, by a team under the leadership of Dr. Zhengli Shi, of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This virus carries the moniker RaTG13. It is about 96 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2, but that four percentage point difference represents decades of evolutionary divergence, possibly in a different population of bats. In other words, RaTG13 and our nemesis bug are not the same virus; they are like cousins who have lived all their adult lives in separate towns.

What happened, during those decades of evolutionary divergence, to bring a still-undiscovered bat coronavirus to the brink of spillover into humans and enable it to become SARS-CoV-2? We don’t yet know. Scientists in China will keep looking for that closer-match virus. The evidence gathered so far is mixed and incomplete, complicated by the fact that coronaviruses are capable of a nifty evolutionary trick: recombination.

That means that when two strains of coronavirus infect the same individual animal, they may swap sections and emerge as a composite, possibly (by sheer chance) encompassing the most aggressive, adaptive sections of the two. SARS-CoV-2 may be such a composite, built by happenstance and natural selection from components known to exist among other viruses in the wild, and emerging from its nonhuman host with a fearsome capacity to grab, enter and replicate within certain human cells.

Bad luck for us. But evolution is not rigged to please Homo sapiens.

SARS-CoV-2 has made a great career move, spilling over from its reservoir host into humans. It already has achieved two of the three Darwinian imperatives: expanding its abundance and extending its geographical range. Only the third imperative remains as a challenge: to perpetuate itself in time.

Will we ever be rid of it entirely, now that it’s a human virus? Probably not. Will we ever get past the travails of this Covid-19 emergency? Yes.

Dr. Morens has recently been a co-author of another paper examining how coronaviruses have come at us. In it, he and his colleagues nod to the eminent molecular biologist Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize laureate in 1958, at age 33, who later wrote: “The future of humanity and microbes likely will unfold as episodes of a suspense thriller that could be titled ‘Our Wits Versus Their Genes.’ ”

Dr. Morens is on target, and Dr. Lederberg was right. Viruses can evolve, quickly and efficaciously. But we humans are smart, sometimes.

David Quammen is an author and journalist whose books include “Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-covid-evolution.html

Useless Idiots! Dr. Stuart Ditchek, a pediatrician in Midwood, said he had nine patients test positive yesterday out of a total of 31 tests, for a positivity rate of nearly 30%, compared to the citywide average of 1.2%.

NYC health department sees ‘significant’ Covid-19 rise in largely Orthodox neighborhoods

 

The number of cases is rising sharply in areas that were hit hard in March and April.

(JTA) — Six heavily Orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens are currently contributing 20% of all new Covid-19 cases in New York City, and rising cases there are cause for “significant concern,” city health officials announced Tuesday.

The new data comes amid signs of growing alarm in New York City’s Orthodox communities about the possible beginning of a second wave of cases, after a brutal spring and relatively quiet summer.

The data corresponds to what doctors on the ground in the neighborhoods are reporting — that the number of cases is rising sharply in areas that were hit hard in March and April.

Dr. Stuart Ditchek, a pediatrician in Midwood, said he had nine patients test positive yesterday out of a total of 31 tests, for a positivity rate of nearly 30%, compared to the citywide average of 1.2%.

Ditchek said he’s seeing an “exponential rise” in daily cases — and growing increasingly concerned that his community may face a second wave of disease like the one that was propelled by communal gatherings for the holiday of Purim in mid-March.

“It feels like Purim to me but worse because by Purim we couldn’t test, so we really didn’t know what we were up against,” he said. “I felt it was coming but now what we’re seeing is sort of a snowball effect every day.”

The city’s health department had been watching the neighborhoods, all home to large Orthodox communities, for weeks after cases started rising in August with most attributed to the large weddings held in many Orthodox communities, particularly Borough Park and Williamsburg.

But the case numbers have continued to rise over the past several weeks, despite robocalls from health department officials targeting Orthodox neighborhoods and pleas for testing and mask wearing from the mayor himself.

In several neighborhoods in south Brooklyn, including Midwood, Borough Park and Bensonhurst — which the health department is now labeling the “Ocean Parkway Cluster” after the avenue that connects them — as well as in Williamsburg and Far Rockaway, cases tripled from Aug. 1 to Sept. 19. In Kew Gardens, a neighborhood in Queens, cases doubled in the same period.

While many of the cases over the last six weeks have been linked to the large weddings typical of Orthodox communities, which were resumed in many communities without masks or social distancing by the middle of the summer, the spread of the coronavirus in the communities has likely been exacerbated by a number of factors.

As weddings resumed in August, kids started returning from summer camps and families moved back to Brooklyn after spending the summer months in bungalow colonies in upstate New York. Schools recently resumed in-person classes in many Orthodox neighborhoods, with some flouting social distancing or mask wearing.

Many synagogues have returned to their pre-pandemic capacities despite the continued threat of the pandemic.

And many synagogues have returned to their pre-pandemic capacities despite the continued threat of the pandemic, a sign both of the fervor with which the period of repentance leading up to the High Holidays are regarded in Orthodox communities and the widespread sense that the coronavirus pandemic had ended in the communities long ago.

Orthodox communities in Borough Park, Crown Heights and Williamsburg, three neighborhoods home to large Hasidic populations, were hit particularly hard as the pandemic first hit the United States in March after celebrations of Purim, a Jewish holiday often marked by parties and heavy drinking, came as the virus spread in the city but before restrictions were put in place.

By late spring, many in these communities had returned to normal life, resuming in-person studies in yeshivas and prayers at synagogues and largely forgoing the masks that were then becoming a common sight in the city.

To many, the extent to which the communities were battered by the virus in March gave them a pass to resume normal life as many assumed that the communities had achieved herd immunity. Indeed, through much of the summer, local health clinics reported few new cases of Covid-19 despite the resumption of normal activities.

But in August, the signs of a second wave began appearing in several communities, with weddings eyed as the culprit.

An administrator at a network of health clinics in Williamsburg saw the number of cases increase dramatically over the past week.

Where there had been one or two cases per week over the summer, those numbers increased to ten cases per week in early September and more than 50 cases just last week. The clinic is now preparing for a second wave with the same measures it took before the first wave, making sure the clinic has enough personal protective equipment and reviewing protocol for testing and isolating suspected Covid cases.

“We were like, oh, that’s kind of what happened with our cases in early March,” she said of the dramatically increasing cases.

With synagogues packed over Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and Sukkot approaching, she expects the numbers to continue to rise over the next several weeks.

Just yesterday, she said, the clinics had 10 positive tests, 33 negatives and more than 20 pending results. Even if all of the pending tests are negative, the positivity rate at the clinic would be over 15% — more than five times what New York’s governor has determined is the threshold to safely operate schools.

https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/nyc-health-department-sees-significant-covid-19-rise-in-largely-orthodox-neighborhoods/?preview_id=1309493

 

 

Rabbi Moshe Tuvia Lieff of Agudath Israel Bais Binyomin (Ave L) in Brooklyn, formerly a rabbi in Minneapolis, has Covid and exposed numerous people when he spoke in his synagogue on Rosh Hashana.

 

 

 

Rabbi Moshe Elefant, chief operating officer of the New York-based Orthodox Union’s kosher division, which has about 600 clients in China ---- “We are going to have a real challenge: we can’t get into the facilities.”.

The biggest Fraud Perpetrated on The Global Kosher Consumer In Recent Memory!

Kosher Crisis Hits $19 Billion Market With Rabbis Stuck at Home

To certify food, much of which originates in China, factory inspections are going virtual.

Rabbi Eli Lando, executive manager at Brooklyn-based OK Kosher Certification.

 

In an ordinary year, Rabbi David Moskowitz would have spent the weeks before Rosh Hashanah, the holiday that celebrates the start of the Jewish New Year, working in China. For more than a decade, the native of New York’s Rockland County has run Shatz Kosher Services, which verifies that ingredients made in Chinese factories don’t contain pork or otherwise violate Jewish dietary laws. Late summer is usually a busy season, with companies gearing up to make products for Passover the following spring.

Rosh Hashanah starts on Sept. 18, but Moskowitz hasn’t been to China in months. The Chinese government closed its borders to most foreigners early in the Covid-19 pandemic, and the 53-year-old is in Ashdod, an Israeli city about 20 miles south of Tel Aviv. From there, he tries to do his job via videoconferences linked to cameras at Chinese factories showing him everything from the office to the factory floor to the warehouse. “It’s not the traditional way, but what is traditional in corona?” he asks. “Everything has been thrown out the window. We find ways to do the job.”

There’s a lot more to the kosher food industry than Hebrew National hot dogs and Manischewitz wine. Kosher food was a $19.1 billion industry in 2018, according to Allied Market Research, which projects it will grow to $25.6 billion by 2026. Many ordinary products in U.S. supermarkets are certified kosher, with everything from Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to McCormick spices having kashrut symbols, and those labels can provide assurance not just for observant Jews but also for gentiles who are vegan or have other dietary restrictions.

Empty shelves in the kosher meat section of a Best Market food store in Great Neck, N.Y.

While China doesn’t have many Jews, it’s nonetheless an important part of the kosher food industry: Chinese factories produce canned fruit and other packaged goods and also play a critical role in the production of artificial flavorings, amino acids, and other ingredients that make their way into the diets of observant Jews. “Anything you pick up in a supermarket or a drugstore, there are most probably between two and six ingredients from China,” Moskowitz says.

All of those need to be certified, and usually dozens of mashgihim (kashrut inspectors) working for competing agencies crisscross the Asian nation to do factory visits that can be as short as a few hours or last for several days.

Now the pandemic has crushed that business, with inspectors unable to do on-the-ground vetting. That’s forcing industry heavyweights such as Baltimore-based Star-K Certification Inc., which inspects more than 500 facilities in China, to deploy seven mashgihim in Israel and the U.S. to conduct remote inspections, with Chinese staffers providing them with video evidence of the production lines. “They are online with them, going every step of the way,” says Star-K President Avrom Pollak.

“It’s not the traditional way, but what is traditional in corona?”

China is not the only country with travel restriction headaches. In July, Star-K sent four rabbis via private jet to a fish-gelatin facility in Uganda, where they quarantined for 14 days to supervise production. Kenover Marketing Corp., the closely held company in Bayonne, N.J., that owns Manischewitz and other major kosher brands, struggled to get inspectors to facilities making instant noodles in Singapore. “For a few weeks we were really in a nail-biting session,” says Charles Herzog, Kenover’s vice president for new products and procurement. “It was a game of chess, putting it all together.”

The pandemic hasn’t hurt supply for now, but people in the industry are warning about possible shortages during Passover in late March and early April, when the rules are stricter and virtual inspections often cannot suffice. Most Passover products are certified with full-time rabbinical supervision, according to Rabbi Moshe Elefant, chief operating officer of the New York-based Orthodox Union’s kosher division, which has about 600 clients in China. “For us, Passover is now,” he says. “We are going to have a real challenge: There’s no cutting corners, and we can’t get into the facilities.”

Rabbi Eli Lando expects virtual visits will be temporary.

Companies may need to shift production to the U.S. and other countries with large Jewish populations and plenty of resident mashgihim who don’t need to struggle with international travel restrictions. That should help large agencies that conduct inspections in the U.S., such as the Orthodox Union, weather the coronavirus storm. Smaller players like Rabbi Moskowitz’s Shatz Kosher Services that are more focused on international markets will have a tougher time. Revenue since the start of the pandemic has dropped 85%, he says, but the company hasn’t laid off any of its 10 office workers in the northeastern city of Qingdao. “I’m trying to keep them on for when things get back to normal,” Moskowitz says.

While Covid-19 may lead to long-term changes in the way many people work from home, most adjustments in the kosher industry will be temporary, says Rabbi Eli Lando, executive manager at Brooklyn, N.Y.-based OK Kosher Certification, which is conducting virtual inspections for many of its 700 facilities in China. Mashgihim still need to be able to make unannounced visits to factories, he says, something that can’t be done as well online.

“If you can’t surprise the company to make sure they are not doing something behind your back, that puts the whole kosher program in jeopardy,” Lando says. “It is very important to emphasize as soon as the pandemic is over, we will not allow any virtual visits.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-16/kosher-during-coronavirus-rabbis-inspect-chinese-food-plants-virtually?srnd=premium

Fake Jews!

 

The study shows that singing – particularly loud and consonant-rich singing – spreads a lot of aerosol particles and droplets into the surrounding air.

Could singing spread Covid-19?

If silence is golden, speech is silver – and singing the worst.

Singing doesn’t need to be silenced, however, but at the moment the wisest thing is to sing with social distancing in place. The advice comes from aerosol researchers at Lund University in Sweden. They have studied the amount of particles we actually emit when we sing – and by extension – if we contribute to the increased spread of Covid-19 by singing.

“There are many reports about the spreading of Covid-19 in connection with choirs singing. Therefore, different restrictions have been introduced all over the world to make singing safer. So far, however, there has been no scientific investigation of the amount of aerosol particles and larger droplets that we actually exhale when we sing”, says Jakob Löndahl, associate professor of Aerosol Technology at Lund University.

Aerosols are small airborne particles. To get a better understanding of the amount of aerosols and virus particles we actually emit when we sing, 12 healthy singers and two people with confirmed Covid-19 took part in a research project. Seven of the participants were professional opera singers.


The study shows that singing – particularly loud and consonant-rich singing – spreads a lot of aerosol particles and droplets into the surrounding air. 

Droplets are spread in the air when we sing – here from powerful and consonant-rich singing
photographed with a high-speed camera. (The film is silent.) Photo: Alexios Matamis

“Some droplets are so large that they only move a few decimetres from the mouth before they fall, whereas others are smaller and may continue to hover for minutes. In particular, the enunciation of consonants releases very large droplets and the letters B and P stand out as the biggest aerosol spreaders”, says Malin Alsved, doctoral student of Aerosol Technology at Lund University.

During the research experiments at Lund University’s Aerosol Laboratory, the singers had to wear clean air suits and enter a specially built chamber supplied with filtered, particle-free air. In the chamber, analysis was conducted of the number and mass of particles emitted by singers during breathing, talking, different types of singing and singing with a face mask. 

What they sang was a short and plosive-rich Swedish song, “Bibbis pippi Petter”, which was repeated 12 times in two minutes at constant pitch. The same song was also repeated with the consonants removed, leaving only the vowels. During the song tests, aerosols and larger droplets were measured using strong lamps, a high-speed camera and an instrument that can measure very small particles. The louder and more powerful the song, the greater the concentration of aerosols and droplets.


“We also carried out measurements of virus in the air close to two people who sang when they had Covid-19. Their air samples contained no detectable amount of virus, but the viral load can vary in different parts of the airways and between different people. Accordingly, aerosols from a person with Covid-19 may still entail a risk of infection when singing”, says Malin Alsved.

During the tests, the singers sang into a funnel. The arosol particles were measured at the other end of the funnel.

Can we still have choral singing, singalongs during concerts, chanting at sporting events and loud talk in bars? The researchers consider that if we have a good understanding of the risks involved when a group of people sing together, we can also sing in a safer way. The song can be sung with social distancing, good hygiene and good ventilation, which reduces the concentration of aerosol particles in the air. Face masks can also make a difference.

“When the singers were wearing a simple face mask this caught most of the aerosols and droplets and the levels were comparable with ordinary speech”, says Jakob Löndahl.

“Singing does not need to be silenced, but presently it should be done with appropriate measures to reduce the risk of spreading infection”, says Jakob Löndahl.

Publication in Aerosol Science and Technology: Exhaled respiratory particles during singing and talking

 SEE THE VIDEO ANIMATION:
https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/could-singing-spread-covid-19?fbclid=IwAR0mhdt3aha_DRxEEYVccSaCelSJtBqHSyTL3JVpvWx6NpAxRS6TU4JGL1A
 

An Afterthought From The Agudath Israel After A Shaming By This Blog - Yeah, Stay Alive At least Until The Next Agudah Convention

via GIPHY

 

Agudath Israel Statement

 

Unfortunately, the uptick in COVID-19 cases in our communities, noted in Agudath Israel of America’s recent statement regarding simchos, continues its upward trajectory. While there have been hospitalizations, boruch Hashem most of the recent cases have not been as serious as those in March and April. Theories to explain this phenomenon abound, and much remains unclear. Some medical experts see the slow rise in cases now in our community as echoing what we experienced in early March, chas v’sholom, and are concerned that we may be at the cusp of an exponential rise. Others see the past month, in isolation, as less alarming.  

 

The truth is, we do not know where this is headed.  

 

And that is exactly why we must remain vigilant.  

 

So, this Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, please remember to daven fervently for tichleh shona v’kililosaho. We must all resolve to improve our limud and support of Torah, kavod hatefila, and kedusha, as the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah has instructed. And, with the guidance of your rabbonim, please also take the precautions you’ve heard about so many times in the past 6 months – for yourself, and for the people next to you who may have health conditions that put them at greater risk. 

 

Medical experts and health officials are recommending that, as much as possible, people mask and social distance, especially given the uptick. They further advise that for indoor gatherings, ventilation should be enhanced by opening windows and/or increasing the fresh air input settings of HVAC systems. This is especially so in the context of the Yomim Noraim, when we spend additional time together in shul.  

Of course, the elderly and those at high risk should be especially careful. Individuals who have had exposure to a COVID case or attended a high-risk event should seek medical advice before attending shul. And if you feel at all ill with COVID symptoms, please stay home; do not risk endangering your fellow man.  

 

May our renewed focus on bein adam lamakom and bein adam lachaveiro merit a k'siva va'chasima tova for all of us.  

In Long Island, approximately 15 to 20 families were asked by one school to quarantine after they were found to have attended a wedding of about 200 people.

Rabbi Yaakov Bender - Rosh HaYeshiva Yeshiva Darchei Torah

Dear Parents,

As many of you have already heard, there is a concern that the Yeshiva may have to close because of a proposal from the City of New York.

Let me assure you that we have been in daily and open communication with the Department of Health. We have made them aware of any cases within the Yeshiva – both confirmed and possible – and the precautions we are taking. These include sending home entire classes if there was a single case in the class and quarantining Beis Medrash bachurim in their on-campus residences. This is in addition to the months of preparation that we invested in opening school safely.

From mask procurement, to daily disinfection of our facilities, to daily temperature checks of students and staff, to social distancing and ‘cohort’ measures throughout the school, we have taken every possible precaution to keep our talmidim safe.

Some facts:

– Yeshiva Darchei Torah is in compliance with all published City, State and Federal government rules and regulations.

– Yeshiva Darchei Torah is in daily consultation with leading infectious disease specialists, and has accepted and implemented all of their recommendations and suggestions.

– Yeshiva Darchei Torah remains in contact with the Department of Health and we are confident that together we will come to a reasonable and amicable resolution that will keep the interests of the children at the forefront.

There is no replacement for in-person learning, which we have been conducting in a safe and efficient manner — in careful adherence to the instructions of world-class infectious disease specialists — since late August. However, our staff is hard at work preparing a plan to transition to virtual learning.
We are working feverishly to resolve any issues and will keep you updated.

This is a nisayon. Life is full of nisyonos, and our job in life is to overcome them–and grow in the process. Im Yirtzeh Hashem we will pass this nisayon with flying colors.

I close with the tefillah from Selichos that should be our focus during this nisayon, as we ask Hashem: “Asei limaan tinokos shel bais rabban shelo chat’u.”

Rabbi Yaakov Bender

******

‘This is what we expected’: COVID closures and quarantines already widespread at New York-area Jewish day schools

Students at The Moriah School in Englewood, New Jersey attend a socially distanced assembly on the first day of school.

(JTA) – One New York City private Jewish high school shut down Monday after two students in 11th grade and two students in 12th grade tested positive. Several students in the younger grades exhibited symptoms.

In a boys’ yeshiva high school in New Jersey’s Bergen County, a suspected COVID case in an 11th grader sent the entire grade home for quarantine.

In Long Island, approximately 15 to 20 families were asked by one school to quarantine after they were found to have attended a wedding of about 200 people.

“We spent a lot of time, energy and resources getting school ready for a full reopening,” said Rabbi Jeffrey Kobrin, head of school at North Shore Hebrew Academy, the school that asked families to quarantine after the wedding. “Our concern had always been what would happen when the kids were not in school.

“If I sound exhausted, I am,” Kobrin added.

Just weeks into the beginning of the new school year in which schools have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Plexiglas shields, personal protective equipment, teacher training and reconfiguring classrooms, the Jewish day schools that hoped their smaller sizes and tight-knit school communities would keep them open through the pandemic are already beginning to close or quarantine students.

A number of schools have been forced to quarantine classrooms or grades after positive cases or exposures of students to positive cases. In Chicago, the Rochelle Zell Jewish High School switched to remote learning just three days after reopening when two faculty members tested positive. In the case of Ramaz Upper School, a high school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the entire school was shut down for two days and transitioned to distance learning after four students tested positive and several others showed symptoms of COVID-19.

For many schools, there’s little that can be done to stem the new cases. That’s because the virus is likely being transmitted outside of school, where the strict protocol meant to keep students and teachers safe are not enforced. The cases are likely developing from the interactions outside of school buildings – weddings, parties, Shabbat meals and playdates – that school administrators are struggling to control.

In Bergen County, seven Orthodox day schools sent a joint letter Aug. 26 outlining expectations for the coming weeks: Families that fly anywhere or travel to a hot-spot state for the High Holidays would need to quarantine for 14 days before returning to school, the letter said, and all attendees at bar and bat mitzvahs would have to wear masks.

“The current threshold for school closing is a relatively low number of positive cases,” they wrote. “Only by our joint efforts can we individually and collectively do our part to enable our community schools to remain open, an effort that helps all of us, especially our children.”

By early September, at least five of those seven schools had notified parents about cases or exposures in the school. They included students who tested positive or were exposed to someone who tested positive and faculty who were exposed to someone who tested positive.

One school emailed parents begging for cooperation on social distancing guidelines outside of school after several families in the area gathered for a Shabbat meal and a parent at the meal tested positive.
To some, the cases in schools and the quarantines and classroom closures that follow are inevitable.

“Whenever they would have opened, it would have happened,” said Dr. Hylton Lightman, a pediatrician in Far Rockaway who tested hundreds of students at local Orthodox day schools before school started. Several Long Island schools required testing and kept those who tested positive out of school to quarantine. “Schools can control a certain amount … but the parents also need to show they’re mature enough to follow these guidelines.”

Lightman said he’s noticed a surge of anxiety over the recent upticks in cases in his community of Far Rockaway and other Orthodox communities in the New York area. In the last few weeks, his office has received as many as 40 to 50 calls a day from parents anxious about their children possibly exhibiting COVID symptoms.

“The anxiety level from the parents and the children has escalated astronomically,” he said.
 
At the Moriah School in Englewood, New Jersey, no classrooms have had to quarantine due to exposure, though one faculty member has. But “we’re just waiting for it,” Erik Kessler, the school’s executive director, said of the possibility that a positive case would cause a cohort of students to quarantine.

“I think this is what we expected,” Kessler said of the positive cases and exposures causing quarantines of classes in several local schools. “We were hoping that people would stay within their pods but we’re realistic, as well.”

The roller coaster at New York-area Jewish schools comes as Israel prepares to shutter its schools for several weeks, amid rising cases there. There, many classes and grades have been sent to quarantine since schools reopened Sept. 1, and during the upcoming closure, it is not clear whether children in all grades will receive instruction online. 

For the New York and New Jersey schools, learning is continuing from a distance even as schools close or quarantine individual students or classrooms. In addition to outfitting schools with Plexiglas barriers and new distanced desk arrangements, many schools have spent the summer installing cameras in classrooms for students to participate from home in case of quarantine. Some schools have spent time and money training teachers to improve the Zoom teaching experience, with the understanding that some closures or quarantines would be inevitable.

Daniel Rubin, a father in Queens whose three children returned to in-person schooling last week, said he still believes reopening schools is the right decision.

“I maintain that right now schools are practically the only place outside of homes that are actually enforcing some degree of distancing/masking, and so it’s not the schools I’m worried about,” Rubin said. “If a school needs to shut down, it’ll shut down.”

But with the High Holidays approaching, bringing extended family gatherings over Rosh Hashana and social meals shared by families and friends over Sukkot, and upticks in several heavily Jewish neighborhoods in New York City, several schools in New York and New Jersey are desperately trying to avoid letting the holidays further derail in-person schooling.

The Hannah Senesh Community Day School in Brooklyn asked families not to travel for the holidays, to only attend High Holiday services with 50 people or fewer if outdoors or at 33% capacity if indoors, to ensure indoor services take place in spaces with HVAC systems that have been vetted by experts, and to maintain a distance of 12 feet from other participants while singing.

“If you attend a communal prayer service that does not follow the above guidelines, you are asked to self-quarantine for 14 days,” the school wrote.

Solomon Schechter of Bergen County sent out a notice to their families, as well. “I implore everyone to make responsible choices during the Jewish holidays and for the duration of the pandemic,” wrote Steve Freedman, head of the school. 

In Long Island, approximately 15 to 20 families were asked by one school to quarantine after they were found to have attended a wedding of about 200 people.

https://www.jta.org/2020/09/14/health/this-is-what-we-expected-covid-closures-and-quarantines-already-widespread-at-new-york-area-jewish-day-schools?utm_source=JTA_Maropost&utm_campaign=JTA_DB&utm_medium=email&mpweb=1161-22816-462090