Is it rational to ignore the high communal viral load in American society and to not do more to lower it so that fewer people are exposed, become sick, transmit onwards and possibly die?

 

There Is Nothing Normal about One Million People Dead from COVID

 

Mass media and policy makers are pushing for a return to pre‐COVID times while trying to normalize a staggering death toll

A woman watches white flags on the National Mall in September 2021 in Washington, D.C. Over 660,000 white flags were installed here to honor Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19 epidemic.

Sometime in the next few weeks, the official death toll for the two-year COVID pandemic in the U.S. will reach one million. Despite being the wealthiest nation on the planet, the U.S. has continued to have the most COVID infections and deaths per country, by far, and it has the highest per capita death rate of any wealthy nation.

This is an unfathomable number of people dead, yet, mass media are downplaying it. This is despite an empathetic New York Times headline in May 2020 of “U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, an Incalculable Loss,” and using its entire front page to print names of some of the deceased. As Luppe B. Luppen noted on Twitter, the newspaper’s more recent headline was the cruel and callous “900,000 Dead, but Many Americans Move On.”

The Times is not alone; several large mainstream publications, in complicity with politicians of both major political parties, have been beating a death knell of a drum for getting “back to normal” for months. The effect is the manufactured consent to normalize mass death and suffering—to subtly suggest to Americans that they want to move on.

News media are helping to shape public opinion in order for business to return to the very circumstances that have created this ongoing crisis. A return to normal will allow profits to be reaped by people working relatively safely from their homes (the target audience of many news organizations’ advertisers) at the expense of people working or studying in person who are more vulnerable.

A few weeks ago, David Leonhardt, the writer of the Times’ newsletter “The Morning,” asked Michael Barbaro, the host of the company’s podcast “The Daily”: “If [COVID] is starting to look like a regular respiratory virus, is it rational [emphasis by the Times] to treat it like something completely different— to disrupt all our lives in all these big and consequential ways[?]”

I was dismayed. That rhetorical move is a familiar one to me: Two white men frame what they think is rational, deeming any questioning of their stand as irrational.

Meanwhile, some 140,000 children in the U.S. have lost a caregiver—about one in every 500 children. That is a big and consequential loss, and those children are probably not among the many who are ready to “move on” (another nearly one million Americans can’t move on because they’re already dead). During this pandemic, Black people have been disproportionately killed by this virus. About 50,000 people have died each month of COVID, meaning several Black children are being orphaned by SARS-CoV-2 this month, as you read this.

So is it rational? To be calling for the end of life-saving mitigation efforts and saying they harm children when so many have been orphaned here and worldwide?

Is it rational for Democrats, Republicans and much of the news media to press on towards what writer Tom Scocca calls a policy of “unlimited” COVID? The Democratically controlled state governments of California, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut all moved to drop indoor mask mandates just days after a near-record 3,958 people died of COVID on a single day, February 4. Even the White House reportedly has “begun hinting at an impending ‘new normal,’ in a conscious messaging shift meant to get people comfortable with a scenario where the virus remains widespread yet at more manageable levels.”

Is it rational, when as many people who died of AIDS in its worst year (near 50,000 in 1995) are dying every month of COVID, to think of the novel coronavirus as a “regular respiratory virus”—and to think that the big and consequential disruptions to worry about are mask wearing and ventilation, and not death and debilitation?

Is it rational to ignore the high communal viral load in American society and to not do more to lower it so that fewer people are exposed, become sick, transmit onwards and possibly die?

Is it rational for the Times to be advertising an event happening in March hosted by Leonhardt called “The New Normal, a Virtual Event on Life and Love After Omicron,” which might just coincide with the timing of the millionth American officially dying of COVID?

Well, it depends on what it is you are trying to rationalize.

If you’re trying to get people to accept that what the nation is doing right now is okay, and 50,000 deaths per month should be normalized, then it’s rational.

If you don’t want people to wonder why in just two years, the U.S. death toll for COVID is about 130 percent the size of the death toll of four decades of HIV—while global COVID deaths are less than 20 percent of the world’s AIDS deaths—then it’s rational.

If you want to manufacture consent for looser pandemic measures in the U.S. rather than more comprehensive ones as the communal viral rate demands, then making these claims is rational.

But it’s not ethical to manufacture what I call a viral underclass, and it’s incorrect to pretend as though the news media have no role in creating it nor in persuading the public that so many deaths are inevitable.

It’s a shame that major news outlets are talking more about moving on and returning to normal, and not running more pieces calling for an increase in government-funded mitigation efforts (more free high-quality masks and tests, upgraded ventilation in worksites and schools) to stem the tide of death. 

American norms (rampant incarceration, eviction, homelessness, lack of health care, poor ventilation and economic inequality) are fairly deadly as is.

Rushing for the “urgency of normal” is “wishful thinking,” epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves wrote in the Nation. Intentionally or unintentionally, “the urgency of normal”—a phrase cropping up a lot lately.

“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. 

Procrastination is still the thief of time.”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-is-nothing-normal-about-one-million-people-dead-from-covid1/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=today-in-science&utm_content=link&utm_term=2022-02-10_featured-this-week&spMailingID=71228507&spUserID=NTQwMDkwNTkwNDU4S0&spJobID=2233374821&spReportId=MjIzMzM3NDgyMQS2

Five Orthodox Jews join petition, claiming the city’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement for indoor spaces is a ‘form of slavery’ - that “violates numerous commandments in the Torah that require one to remember and internalize the great Exodus from slavery in ancient Egypt.”

 

‘Torah violation’: Citing religious beliefs, lawsuit challenges NYC vaccine mandate

 

Five Orthodox Jews join petition, claiming the city’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement for indoor spaces is a ‘form of slavery’

 

Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, New York City

 

New York Jewish Week via JTA – Five Orthodox Jewish New Yorkers have joined a suit challenging the city’s vaccine requirements for indoor spaces.

Two of the plaintiffs are rabbis at yeshivas. The suit, filed Feb. 7 in New York, challenges the “Key to NYC” program and a recent COVID vaccination mandate for religious and private school employees. The mandate was opposed by many haredi Orthodox yeshivas and groups representing them, including Agudath Israel of America.

Three of the Jewish plaintiffs are parents suing on behalf of a total of 12 of their children, all minors, whose COVID vaccination they oppose on what they claim are religious grounds.

The unnamed plaintiffs allege an “unprecedented abuse of power” in regard to COVID vaccine requirements for indoor spaces in the city. The plaintiffs, who also include a Catholic resident of New York, object to the vaccine on religious and constitutional grounds.

The Catholic and Orthodox Jewish plaintiffs say the vaccines are derived from research into fetal cell lines from abortions in the 1970s and ’80s, a technology they oppose on religious grounds. Another religious ground cited by the Orthodox Jewish plaintiffs is that “[s]ubmitting to a government dictate that conditions freedom on vaccination is a form of slavery and subjugation” that “violates numerous commandments in the Torah that require one to remember and internalize the great Exodus from slavery in ancient Egypt.”

Groups representing the major Jewish denominations, including the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America, have all released statements endorsing vaccines, and many rabbis in the haredi Orthodox community have participated in campaigns to increase vaccination rates in their communities. Still, Orthodox health professionals and communal leaders note that a vocal minority of their community won’t heed their guidance.

 

The ‘Key to NYC’ program introduced by former mayor Bill De Blasio requires proof of vaccination for a variety of indoor activities including dining, gyms and entertainment

 

The suit was filed by the Thomas More Society, a conservative Catholic nonprofit that earlier in the pandemic represented Orthodox Jews in New York in a lawsuit opposing caps on the number of attendees able to attend houses of worship. In that case, a judge blocked the state from imposing stricter rules on houses of worship than on other businesses.

In November 2020, in a case brought by Agudath Israel, the Supreme Court ruled that occupancy restrictions and mandates unfairly discriminated against religious institutions.

The Thomas More Society has filed a number of lawsuits across the country opposing vaccine requirements, including representing health care workers in New York State who have been denied an exemption from the vaccine on religious grounds.

If successful, the suit would allow yeshiva employees to remain or return to work without a vaccine, as well as gather indoors and gain access to the same spaces as vaccinated New Yorkers without discrimination.

Named in the suit are New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Dr. Dave Choski, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

The suit asserts that the Key to NYC program is creating a two-tiered society within the city, where unvaccinated residents are unable to participate in daily life or institutions, and that the program violates rights to due process, equal protection, privacy, freedom of assembly and free exercise of religion.

Members of the Orthodox community speak with NYPD officers in the Borough Park neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York

“Never in the history of this country, nor in the history of pandemics generally, has any government declared an entire class of citizens personae non gratae based on refusal to be vaccinated,” wrote Thomas More Society Special Counsel Christopher Ferrara in a press release. “What we see here is the sad corruption of public health policy by power politics.”

The complaint also alleges that Key to NYC offers exemptions to secular activities and discriminates against religious activities, and discriminates against those who hold that COVID-19 vaccinations violate their religion.

Marc Stern, the chief legal officer for the American Jewish Committee, does not see sufficient evidence for the religious freedom claim, and said several of the lawsuit’s other claims, including that the Key to NYC program infringes on a person’s right to privacy, are baseless.

“I can’t say the suit is completely frivolous, and there are certainly disturbing aspects to the accommodation guidelines, where some of the lines aren’t neat and clean,” Stern said. However, “the court has ruled many times that in cases of an epidemic, the government has great latitude for what they can do to balance public health guidelines with what will benefit the economy. I’m reasonably certain this case will not see a sympathetic response, and those lines will prevail.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/lawsuit-challenges-new-yorks-covid-19-vaccine-mandate-citing-religious-beliefs/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2022-02-10&utm_medium=email

A paper being touted as the "Johns Hopkins study" that suggested lockdowns didn't reduce COVID deaths has serious flaws and is being misinterpreted, experts said.

 

What You Need to Know About That 'Johns Hopkins' Lockdown Study

 

— "All of this adds up to a very weird review paper"

A paper being touted as the "Johns Hopkins study" that suggested lockdowns didn't reduce COVID deaths has serious flaws and is being misinterpreted, experts said.

Fox News has charged that there's been a "full-on media blackout" of the paper, but science and medical experts argue the real reason for not covering the paper is because of its limitations.

First, the paper is a "working paper" that hasn't been peer-reviewed. Also, it was published on the website of the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at the Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences in Baltimore.

Study author Steve Hanke, PhD, is the founder of the institute. He is an applied economist, not an epidemiologist, public health expert, or medical doctor. Hanke is also a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Hanke's co-authors are Jonas Herby, MS, a "specialist consultant" at the Center for Political Studies in Copenhagen, and Lars Jonung, PhD, professor emeritus of economics at Lund University in Sweden -- a country that famously opted out of lockdowns and only recommended masks in public. Again, neither of Herby nor Jonung are medical or public health experts.

The trio are "highly regarded economists who have also been extremely anti-lockdown since March 2020," tweeted Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, PhD, an epidemiologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia, who posted a thorough critique of the paper.

Its key conclusion was that lockdowns only reduced COVID mortality by 0.2% on average, but several researchers said that number is unreliable.

For starters, experts commenting for the U.K. Science Media Centre warned about the paper's questionable definition of "lockdown." Samir Bhatt, DPhil, a professor of statistics and public health at Imperial College London, said in that statement that the study's "most inconsistent aspect is the reinterpreting of what a lockdown is."

"The authors define lockdown as 'the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention [NPI].' This would make a mask-wearing policy a lockdown," Bhatt stated.

Neil Ferguson, PhD, also of Imperial College London, said in the same statement that by that definition, "the U.K. has been in permanent lockdown since 16th of March 2021, and remains in lockdown -- given it remain compulsory for people with diagnosed COVID-19 to self-isolate for at least 5 days." Ferguson is the director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and the Jameel Institute at the college.

Questions also have been raised about the quality of the included studies. Of the 34 papers ultimately selected, 12 were "working papers" rather than peer-reviewed science. And 14 studies were conducted by economists rather than public health or medical experts, according to Forbes.

Meyerowitz-Katz highlighted his concerns with the paper's inclusion criteria, as it doesn't include "modelled counterfactuals...the most common method used in infectious disease assessments" which excludes "most epidemiological research from the review," he tweeted.

He added that the "included studies certainly aren't representative of research as a whole on lockdowns -- not even close. Many of the most robust papers on the impact of lockdowns are, by definition, excluded."

"All of this adds up to a very weird review paper," he tweeted. "The authors exclude many of the most rigorous studies, including those that are the entire basis for their meta-analysis in the first place. ... They then take a number of papers, most of which found that restrictive NPIs had a benefit on mortality, and derive some mathematical estimate from the regression coefficients indicating less benefit than the papers suggest."

"All of this together means that the actual numbers produced in the review are largely uninterpretable," he tweeted.

 

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/97056?xid=nl_mpt_investigative2022-02-09&eun=g2011045d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=InvestigativeMD_020922&utm_term=NL_Gen_Int_InvestigateMD_Active

The Light Of Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz zt"l - Will Burn on Forever! - "SAFEGUARD THE THREAD OF TRUTH"!

 READ & YOU WILL UNDERSTAND:

https://agudah.org/wp-content/uploads/1984/11/JO1983-V17-N02.pdf

Are You Measuring Up To The Challenge Of The Times? Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky's zt"l Wisdom 40 Years Ago Applies Today And Tomorrow...And Tomorrow...

 READ & REREAD:

https://agudah.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/JO1981-V15-N03.pdf

 On Page 72 - Rav Joseph Ber Soloveitchik Was A Gadol B'Yisroel --- What Happened?