Pandemics Aren’t What They Used to Be
If this were 1983, before the invention of the PCR test, there would be no possible rationale for the unending lockdown in Israel and for laws against running yeshivas, davening in groups, or visiting rebbes, friends, or succos. Deaths would not provide a reason because there haven’t been enough of them. 1,400 deaths over 8 months with each casualty being an average of 80 years old, the majority with other serious medical conditions, does not justify a lockdown of all of society while more than 4x that amount have died from diseases caused by cigarette smoking and about as many die each year from the flu. (In as many as a quarter of the Israeli COVID deaths, COVID wasn’t even a contributing factor but simply present to some degree in the body.) The count of sick people doesn’t justify it because there are about 800 of them at any one time, many with other conditions, and most of the 800 are the same people from month to month.
The alleged justification is the growth of the alleged “infection rate.” What determines whether people are infected? It’s not a traditional blood test. It’s not symptoms. It’s the polymerase chain reaction test. PCR for short. PCR is a method used to rapidly make millions to billions of copies of a specific DNA sample, allowing scientists to take a very small sample of DNA and amplify it to a large enough amount to study in detail. It was not intended to be used to diagnose disease in a person. It’s purpose was research. As biologist Dr. Beda Stadler, the former director of the Institute for Immunology at the University of Bern, tells us, “So if we do a PCR corona test on an immune person, it is not a virus that is detected, but a small shattered part of the viral genome. The test comes back positive for as long as there are tiny shattered parts of the virus left. Correct: Even if the infectious viruses are long dead, a corona test can come back positive, because the PCR method multiplies even a tiny fraction of the viral genetic material enough [to be detected].”
What you read in the press over and over, what you hear from the politicians over and over, is that the infection is spreading. This claim is all based on ignorance about the PCR test. 80% of people who test positive show zero symptoms. 18% show minor symptoms that last a few days, like a good old-fashioned cold. The PCR test only tells you of exposure to a family of viruses called coronavirus. It doesn’t necessarily even tell you of exposure to COVID19. The PCR test in the hands of politicians and politically minded medical appointees is like a machine gun in the hands of the Hutu militia in Rwanda. It’s not something they could ever develop on their own, and in their mad hands it’s lethal.
Another dangerous invention was the change in definition of the word pandemic. Prior to September 2009, it meant a disease “against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” (May 1, 2009, World Health Organization)
In September of 2009, the WHO changed the definition: “A disease epidemic occurs when there are more cases of that disease than normal. A pandemic is a worldwide epidemic of a disease.”
That is quite a difference. The traditional definition warns you of impending mass death. The new definition by the hipsters at the WHO can mean simply that more people than normal will catch a cold.
So they just toss around the word pandemic now and the average person goes by the definition that was in use since before his great-grandfather was born. Between misuse of the PCR test and misuse of the word pandemic, the human race is in quite a panic. And panic is always double in Israel.
We are exposed to viruses all the time. Trillions of them are in the body, which valiantly fights them off. This is the first time in history that a normal physical process is termed sickness. The body is quite a miracle. God equipped it to do amazing things, like fight off disease. What’s happening here is that atheists, who don’t understand religion or medicine, whose entire mentality is shaped by the military to see every problem as war are acting and ordering us to act as if it’s 1973 and the Egyptian army is coming. Lockdown is what the military conducted in the West Bank during the Second Intifada. This is all these people know. Militarism. It’s a religion for them and they have found an excuse to impose it finally on the entire country, half of klal Yisroel.
What kind of epidemic is there when there are no shiva posters on the street, no hearses, thank God. If you don’t know anybody who knows anybody who died or was severely ill then you don’t have an epidemic. The government of Israel originally told us there’d be 10,000 dead by April. So that didn’t happen. They told us 3 months ago there’d be 1,000 seriously ill within 3 weeks. 3 weeks has come and gone 4 times. There’s 850 seriously sick. Nebach yes, pandemic no.
The concept of pikuach nefesh has parameters. Do you get in a car? You are endangering people. Do you have stairs in your house? Danger. 12,000 Americans die each year falling down the stairs. Do you serve chicken to guests? Danger. People choke. 5,000 a year choke to death. Where does it end?
What do we do? That’s a tricky one, that’s a question for gadolim. But I can tell you this much, we should realize we are being had, tricked, lied to. Is shmad, religious persecution, their intention? I don’t know, but it is the result.
What results also is a destruction of the economy and society. We could have built 100 hospitals for what the lockdowns are costing us. A new hospital costs around $100 million. The lockdowns are costing billions. Many parts of Israel are an hour or more from the nearest hospital. A friend of mine died from complications caused by a stroke that could have been stopped had he lived closer to a hospital. I have another friend whose father died of a preventable heart attack, but he was avoiding doctors because of COVID19. According to world-renowned scientist Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford University, “the health care system was severely damaged in many places because of the measures taken.” He says that the overreaction to the virus is putting millions of lives at risk worldwide. Reportedly, suicides are on the rise in Israel, particularly among lonely and isolated elderly people. Spousal abuse is on the rise too. I have several friends that are out of money and credit. They literally cannot buy groceries. The government will not let them work. It was bad enough when the new corporatocracy drove many people to live paycheck to paycheck, but now they don’t even have that. Even communist Russia gave each person a job. This is worse than communism. And these are people that did have some savings, but the lockdowns have gone on for months.
Some people who are not thinking very deeply into this crisis act as if lockdowns are the way to play it safe. Of all the blunt and unimaginative proposals for a solution, a lockdown would have to be the most blunt and least imaginative of them all. We’ll just stop living. How’s that for a solution? It’s like divorce being a solution for the problems of marriage. We’ll just end the marriage. How about that? Simple.
Not so simple for the children. Mass destruction is not the solution to your problems. Lockdowns are the equivalent of divorce, suicide, and atom bombs. Only the guy dropping the bomb doesn’t see the problem. To him it’s a pretty cloud. Wait until he lands his plane and sees what he did.
