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| Vaccination in Tel Aviv (NYT) |
Israel could well become the first country to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19, health officials said on Thursday, with nearly 10 percent of the population already having received the first of two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine by the 12th day of a national vaccination program, which began on Dec. 20.
I have to admit that I am both proud and jealous. Jealous - not only at the speed and efficiency by which they are accomplishing this great task. But by whom they are prioritizing. Which includes anyone over 60 years of age.
As it stands now in the US, the next tier of vaccinations recommended by the CDC will only include people over 75. I am 74 years old. And as the late Don Adams used to say, ‘Missed it by that much!’
I have expressed before - my desire to get vaccinated as soon as possible. But I feel like I’m in purgatory. No clue how long it will be before I am finally even eligible, let alone when I will actually get the shot. Vaccinations in this country are proceeding at a snail’s pace. Which is why I am so jealous of Israel right now.
What makes me even more anxious is a convergence of factors that includes the following. There is a new strain of COVID circulating the word that is at least 50% more contagious than the current one. Each day produces a new record in the numbers of people testing positive, ICU hospitalizations and deaths. In my own community here in Chicago, it seems like more people than ever have tested positive.
Doctors in California are now saying that it is inevitable that they will soon have to ration care. So that if for example there are 2 patients in need of a life saving ventilator but only one available, doctors will have to decide who will live and who will die!
My wife and I are fine and to the best of my knowledge neither of us has been infected yet. But it seems like COVID is closing in on us and sooner or later, we will get it too. God forbid.
I know COVID has been discussed to death here (no pun intended). And like everyone else I am sick and tired of it. But it isn’t going away. It is instead getting worse with each passing day. Even while vaccinations have begun. I therefore repeat what I have been saying here since the very beginning of the pandemic: I cannot emphasize enough - the need to wear masks and socially distance from each other. All while it seems that people are increasingly abandoning these practices.
My hope is that as time goes on, vaccinations will become smoother and more efficient. So that promises like the one Mayor de Blasio made about vaccinating over a million New Yorkers in January will be more than a pipe dream.
The problem is that COVID infections are by far outpacing vaccinations. And It doesn’t help that some people are actually encouraging risky behavior. Treating it as though it was the Torah way to resist or minimize mitigation efforts. And characterizing the need to get vaccinated as a conspiracy theory. As reported by Dovid Teitelbaum on Facebook, one of the more prominent people doing that is Chanaya Weissman.
For those that do not recognize the name, Rabbi Weissman has made it his life’s work to ‘fix’ the Shiduch crisis. After a long history of dating he has gotten some insight into the issue. Although it is outside the scope of this post, I will give him credit for identifying many of the problems in the way much of the Orthodox world dates.
That he has some credibility on one subject tends to give him degree of crdeitbilty by the public (or at least his followers) in other subjects. Credibility that he does not deserve. He is not only not an expert (or even an amateur) in how to treat this disease; he is a dangerous ignoramus and conspiracy theorist who knows well how to make his case. Which makes it all that more important to refute him. Here is part is what Rabbi Wiessman said in his Facebook post entitled ‘Herd Insanity’:
(It) is not the Jewish way to live in terror that everyone around us is infected, and that every object is carrying a deadly virus. It is forbidden to think like this, and it is forbidden to live like this…
It is forbidden to distance yourself from loved ones, friends, and strangers because you are afraid their breath or touch will kill you, or that yours will kill them, when you have no concrete reason to believe anyone is infected…
Now we are told that unless we take an experimental "vaccine", which has already harmed many people, which tens of thousands of doctors without ties to the establishment and the big corporations have raised concerns about… we are told that this "vaccine" is obligatory according to the Torah, even though the risks are real, the effects are unknown…
His views are justifiably being pummeled by the more rational among us. But that does not make his proselytizing any less dangerous. There are a lot of people that listen to his ‘logic’ and may end up harming not only themselves, but their loved ones and anyone else they may come to unintentionally infect with COVID not knowing they have it because they are asymptomatic.
It is now all too easy to see the daily record of increases of the disease in all of its manifestations. The increases are exponential and only getting worse. And yet Chananya’s argument might actually persuade more people that mitigation should be reduced and that vaccinations are more dangerous than the disease itself.
And I cannot protest this enough!