Foolishly Playing With Their Lives

Street scene in Boro Park (Library of Congress)

Willful ignorance. If there is anything that can destroy a people, willful ignorance is it. There are many ways one can apply this maxim.  I have said it a lot about certain Chasidic communities that refuse to educate their children in anything other than religious studies. Which makes them highly susceptible to misinformation that can damage their own health. That ignorance makes them seek answers to health issues that do not necessarily reflect the medical science. Medical science is what health experts use to guide public behavior in the face of Covid-19 - the deadly pandemic we are in the middle of right now. 

I believe that willful ignorance is in large part the reason the Chasidic community of Boro Park has the lowest vaccination rate in the entire city of New York: 

Less than 11% of the neighborhood’s population is fully vaccinated, per the city’s health department data published on Monday. That is half the citywide rate of 22%. 

There are of course other factors besides that contributing to this sad Boro Park statistic. Like their high birth rate.  Boro Park’s population skews heavily young making a high percentage of the population ineligible for the shot. But based on this report in the Forward it seems that ignorance is the driving factor. 

The Chasidim of Boro Park are victims of a dogma that makes most of them mistrust the government and thereby their health experts. And thereby subject to a lot of misinformation they will often take as gospel! Like the belief that vaccinations are neither safe nor effective. 

But here is the truth. Vaccinations work. To illustrate - I saw an incredible statistic yesterday in the Jewish Press:  

There have been no new cases of the coronavirus diagnosed in 112 cities in the Jewish State over the past week. 

Vaccines are safe. The incidence of adverse reactions is so rare that even Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine where there actually was a serious side effect  - only 6 people out of 7 million receiving J&J developed a blood clot. That means that the chances of developing a blood clot are less than one in a million! It is with an abundance of caution that the CDC and FDA have temporarily halted J&J vacccinations for further study. Meanwhile  90% of the people vaccinated in this country have had either Pfizer or Moderna and there hasn’t been one case of a serious side effect like that. (Over 75 million people have been fully vaccinated by those 2 vaccines!)

But because of their willful ignorance, many Chasidim of Boro Park either don’t realize those statistics or don’t believe them. Instead they turn to charlatans and antivaxxers for advice. Who mislead them about both the dangers and effectiveness. They also believe they have achieved herd immunity because so many of them had COVID early on and developed antibodies. Desptie that widespread belief in places like Boro Park there is  no scientific basis to believe they have achieved herd immunity. 

Not everyone in Boro Park is that clueless. At least not Meyer Labin who attempts to explain it: 

“When the common language, the vernacular, is not a scientific one, it’s really easy for such misinformation to proliferate,” Meyer Labin, a Yiddish writer and Hasidic Jew who grew up in Brooklyn, observed in an interview. “It’s such a tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone, and so the side effects of the vaccine are very real. You know — ‘My sister’s neighbor’s best friend got really sick after the vaccine.’” 

I think that pretty much sums up the attitude there. The skepticism is rampant. As is the misinformation resulting from that. When ignorance of science is glorified as a value anything goes. As illustrated by the following: 

Now, as the vaccination campaigns have picked up across the city and country in recent weeks, robocalls, flyers in synagogues and yeshivas, and messages on social-media platforms like WhatsApp have spread rumors about the safety of the vaccine and the severity of its side effects, despite the efforts by some rabbis and political leaders in the community to calm the public. 

Of particular staying power is the baseless claim that the vaccine either accidentally causes infertility, or that it’s an intentional ploy designed by Bill Gates to reduce the world’s population. In fact, mRNA vaccines have been found to protect pregnant and lactating women and their newborns from the virus. 

I should add that it isn’t only the Chasidim of Boro Park that buy into these beyond ridiculous claims. A lot of other people in the world buy into them. But that does not make the Chasidim of Boro Park any less ignorant. It just makes them part of a large segment living in America that can best be described as fools playing with their lives. 

I only hope that there are enough people that do believe in the science so that we can eventually achieve herd immunity. I can’t wait for the day where we can say that not a single person anywhere in America tested positive for the virus. Hope that happens soon.