Search Results for: Corona

Corona: The Fascinating Story of Private, Charitable Home-Care

Enticing excerpts from Mishpacha Magazine:

The scene disclosed by an Israeli television report last week inside a Meah Shearim basement — the nerve center of a medical chesed network that has been providing home care for thousands of COVID patients over the last six months — stunned both health care professionals and the public. But the initial outrage over this medical “fifth column” notwithstanding, the public discovery has subsequently sparked a serious discussion about benefits of the home-care alternative to overcrowded, understaffed hospitals.

The subterranean storage room, home of the Chasdei Amram medical-supplies gemach, holds up to 220 oxygen machines that are loaned out to coronavirus patients for free, as well as dozens of oxygen saturation monitors and other medical equipment for the COVID-19 battle. Volunteers visit coronavirus patients in their homes several times a day, closely monitor their vitals, oxygen saturation levels, and other symptoms, and medical professionals who work with the organization decide when and if the patient should be transferred to a hospital.

Yitzchok Markowitz, founder and director of Chasdei Amram, is adamant that his program provides more hands-on treatment than the current medical establishment and lifts some of the burden off the health care system.

At least 170 people currently being treated by the volunteer network are in serious condition, and over 2,000 patients have received Chasdei Amram’s assistance over the past six months. Markowitz claims that only 10 to 15 of his patients have ended up in the hospitals, and only three out of several thousand have died.

The home-care phenomenon quickly spread beyond the insulated Meah Shearim community to other frum communities in Jerusalem and other cities, but volunteers are not discriminating — anyone who calls gets helped.

“We generally provide initial consultation, and we immediately send out the oxygen-saturation monitor and blood-pressure gauge,” Yitzchak Markowitz tells Mishpacha. “A doctor and a nurse come to their homes to take blood samples, and we transfer the samples to one of two recognized labs we work with.”

According to the strict definitions of Israeli health protocol, a patient with a saturation level of 93 or lower is considered to be in “serious” condition, so it’s safe to assume that this organization and others, such as Yad Sarah, working outside the established health system are caring for about one-fifth of the patients classified as seriously ill in Israel.

The lack of official virus figures in large swathes of the chareidi community make it difficult to draw statistical conclusions with regard to the clandestine chareidi home care network. But this trend, which Chasdei Amram was happy to finally make public, may actually upend existing systems and provide original thinking with regard to how this disease is being treated. Perhaps, as some officials have allowed themselves to wonder out loud, this model, with the proper oversight and direction, is a solution.

…

“The patients who ask us for help will do anything to stay out of the hospital, and these days it’s not about anti-Zionist ideologies,” he says. “No one in Israel wants to go to the hospital, to be dumped in a COVID ward. No one. Secular, religious, chareidim, more extreme sectors, none of them. I get phone calls now from secular people, asking me what to do to avoid hospitalization. People are frightened of being thrown into an overworked, understaffed ward, isolated from their families, alone and helpless.”

…

That said, Markowitz believes that patients are psychologically better equipped to fight when they’re home with family than when they’re isolated in a hospital coronavirus ward. In addition, many elderly COVID-19 patients suffer cognitive decline when out of their familiar surroundings, and especially if they find themselves surrounded by alien-looking workers in their PPEs, with no family close by.

“I would say that 70 percent of recovery depends on the patient’s mood,” he says. “When the patient is in good spirits, we see his saturation go up, along with his other indices. These are facts you can’t deny.”

…

The idea of home hospitalization didn’t start with an underground Meah Shearim gemach. Twenty-five years ago, Yad Sarah founder Rabbi Uri Lupolianski was awarded a special honor by the Health Ministry for creating a prototype for home hospitalization, a model that would greatly alleviate the burden on hospital wards, save thousands of dollars daily for insurance companies and state coffers, and increase the rate of healing and patients’ wellbeing; people have more fight and devotion to get healthy when they’re surrounded by the love and care of their families, as opposed to the confusion of an isolated, frightening ward, even with the best care.

But according to Yad Sarah’s director-general Moshe Cohen, all that remains of that forward-thinking program is a plaque on the wall. He says that 18,000 people have received home medical devices since the virus began, and very few of them were subsequently hospitalized. Without Yad Sarah’s home care, says Cohen, the health care system would be overwhelmed.

See the rest of the article here…

Rabbi Sternbuch Against Corona Mesirah

CORONA UPDATE

Rav Sternbuch spoke again about the issue of people reporting alleged violators of Corona regulations to the authorities. Some people are even reporting Torah and educational institutions and shuls, or people making weddings. Rav Sternbuch noted that this is completely forbidden and constitutes the very severe sin of mesira lashiltonos (see Ch. M. 388).

It is only permitted to report people to the authorities in very specific situations where people are endangering the public and have to be stopped in order to save the public. Even then the violators have to be warned first and an authorized rabbi of stature must be consulted first, and each case must be discussed separately (Rav Sternbuch addressed this issue during the first Corona wave).

Rav Sternbuch reiterated that it goes without saying that every person has to be careful not to harm others, and we are careful about pikuach nefesh no less than the secular authorities. However, those who report others to the authorities in unjustified circumstances, cannot be counted as part of a minyan, no matter how religious they are, as ruled in the Shulchan Oruch, and they have no portion in the world to come (unless they repent).

Regarding the reopening of yeshivos and chadorim Rav Sternbuch already stated more than six months ago that this is of the utmost importance, and if they remain closed that is more dangerous than the dangers posed by the virus itself. Rav Sternbuch stated that if we demonstrate to the authorities that the yeshivos and chadorim are our lifeline, we will merit divine assistance and they will not prevent us from opening them, based on the necessary health precautions.

Rav Sternbuch also called on people who have recovered from the virus, and whom doctors considered to be suitable candidates for donating blood to do so, since doctors have stated that this may save those suffering from the virus, and Chazal have stated that anyone who saves a Jewish soul it is considered as if he has saved an entire world”.

From the English Parsha sheet

HXC: One Early Intervention For Corona Israeli Government Doctors Are Busy Denying

When Politics Corrupts Science

by Jonathan Rosenblum
Mishpacha Magazine
September 2, 2020

How politics polluted our search for a COVID cure

Lawrence Krauss writes in the Wall Street Journal (“The Ideological Corruption of Science,” July 12) how as a young physics professor at Yale, he and his colleagues in the hard sciences looked with bemusement at the dominant deconstructionism of the comparative literature department, which denied the existence of objective truth itself. That could never happen in the sciences, they assured themselves, except under a totalitarian regime such as Stalin’s.

That idealized view of science as a separate realm devoted to the pursuit of truth and devoid of all political bias, Krauss notes, is no longer sustainable. In June, the American Physical Society, representing 55,000 physicists, declared a one-day “strike for black lives” to eradicate “systemic racism” in science. No evidence was adduced for the latter, other than the underrepresentation of blacks in the sciences.

One of the day’s activities was to organize a protest campaign that resulted in the removal of physicist Stephen Hsu as vice president for research at Michigan State University. His crimes: his own studies in computational genomics to study how human genetics might be related to cognitive ability, and research by MSU psychology professors that did not support the narrative of racial bias in police shootings.

A distinguished Canadian chemist was censured by his university provost for calling for merit-based hiring, and the editors of a journal that accepted an article by him were suspended. Meanwhile, Francis Collins, the director of NIH, declared that he will no longer attend scientific conferences where white males, like him, predominate, regardless of their professional merit.

The pure objectivity of science is further clouded by fact that scientists are also human beings, prey to normal human temptations, such as the billions of dollars at stake in the race to produce medical cures or the quest for academic advancement. In 2005, Stanford professor Dr. John Iaonnidis published a paper titled “Why Most Published Research Findings are False,” analyzing how bias creeps into study designs; it quickly became the most downloaded article in the history of the Public Library of Science. And in 2014, his group argued in the Journal of the American Medical Association that 35 percent of the results of controlled clinical trials could not be replicated upon reanalysis of their raw data.

THE POLITICALLY CHARGED field of climate science has been beset by data manipulation by leading research centers. And now there is evidence that politics has crept into the search for cures to COVID-19, argues Dr. Norman Doidge in a lengthy article in Tablet, “Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale.”

On March 21, President Trump tweeted that a combination of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and azithromycin might be a real “game changer” in treating COVID-19. Since that moment, the mainstream media, led by the Washington Post and CNN, has trumpeted every piece of evidence that HCQ is ineffective against COVID-19 and/or potentially dangerous, and downplayed or ignored all evidence to the contrary, in order to establish that Trump is a dangerous idiot. The MSM has, uniquely in the history of pandemics, engaged in what Doidge terms “unwishful thinking” — fervently hoping that a drug with the potential to save tens of thousands of lives, at a low cost, and without dangerous side effects, would turn out to be a bust.

Now, I would not recommend getting one’s medical information from the president’s Twitter feed. And his tweet was, in any event, premature. At most, there was, at the time of his tweet, tantalizing evidence of a “proof of concept.” A study from China published in Nature, a respected science journal, showed that HCQ inhibits COVID-19 in cells in test tubes. As often happens in medicine, the idea of testing HCQ arose when front-line physicians in Wuhan noticed serendipitously that none of those admitted to hospital for COVID-19 were being treated with HCQ for diseases of the connective tissues.

In May, however, Dr. Didier Raoult, the most cited microbiologist in Europe, and a researcher with long experience repurposing existing generic drugs for new diseases, published a study of 1,061 COVID-19 patients given a combination of HCQ and azithromycin, which showed that over 90 percent showed a significant decrease in viral load over the course of treatment. Around that time, a survey of 6,000 front-line physicians in 30 countries showed that a large plurality — 37 percent — chose HCQ, out of 15 possible medicines, as the best response to a diagnosis of COVID-19.

But a non-peer-reviewed Veterans Administration study, a month after President Trump’s tweet, showed a much higher percentage of patients treated with HCQ died than those who were not treated with it. The CNN headline trumpeted: “No Benefits; Higher Death Risks.”

That VA study, however, proved highly flawed. It had ignored a crucial confounding factor: Those patients receiving HCQ in the study were much sicker than those who did not. At that time, HCQ was only approved for use as a desperation measure for seriously ill patients. Dr. Anthony Fauci was still recommending doing nothing for patients quarantined at home.

Yet no proponent of the HCQ-azithromycin combination had ever suggested it is anything more than an early intervention remedy to reduce the viral load and thus the severity of the disease. No one ever proposed it was a wonder drug that could repair failing organ systems at a late stage of the illness.

If the VA study was flawed, sister studies published in Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, two of the world’s leading medical journals, and whose lead author was an eminent Harvard professor, constituted, according to Lancet editor Richard Horton, “monumental fraud.” The studies, which purported to be based on data obtained from 96,000 patients on six continents, showed a 30 percent higher mortality rate for patients treated with HCQ and a greater danger of adverse cardiac events. But when 100 scientists around the world wrote to Lancet seeking the underlying data, the studies’ authors immediately withdrew the two articles.

By labeling the articles a “monumental fraud,” Lancet’s editor sought to divert attention from the no less monumental failure of the peer-review process. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of medical record-keeping, argues Doidge, would have been extremely skeptical that there existed comparable data sets from around the world. (Incidentally, the week before publishing the study, Lancet called editorially for Trump’s defeat in November.)

DEEPLY FLAWED, EVEN FRAUDULENT, negative studies of HCQ do not establish either its efficacy or safety. But if I tested positive for COVID-19, I would not hesitate to take the HCQ-azithromycin combination.

HCQ has been in use for 65 years and has been given to at least one billion people to treat malaria and lupus. Physicians know what dosages are safe. Yale Medical School epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch terms the risk from proper doses, administered over a ten-day period, negligible — 9/100,000. In addition, it is cheap — sixty cents per tablet — and can be taken at home with water.

No doubt other early intervention drugs will be developed: No single drug is appropriate for every patient, and the possibility of better drugs is always there.

On July 1, the Henry Ford Medical Center in Detroit published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases a study of patients in which the severity of illness was fully taken into account, which showed that HCQ reduced the mortality hazard (mortality over a fixed period of time) by 66 percent. Another study from Italy at the end of July found the same 66 percent reduced mortality rate.

And yet Margaret Sullivan, the Washington Post’s media critic, opened her July 31 column (nearly a month after the Henry Ford study was published), ridiculing “fringe doctors spouting dangerous falsehoods about HCQ as a COVID-19 wonder cure.” She was engaged in “unwishful thinking” that Donald Trump would prove right about something.

Doidge’s enumeration of the multiple errors of experts and institutions we trusted to help us solve our most pressing scientific and medical problems includes “academics who increasingly see all human activities as ‘political’ power games, and so in good conscience can justify inserting their own politics into academic pursuits and reporting.”

What, for instance, besides “implicit bias,” at a minimum, can explain a presumably intelligent Harvard medical school professor making the following self-contradictory statements in one breath: HCQ is possibly dangerous, and we must save it for patients suffering from lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. Be wary of the experts.

From Jewish Media Resources, here.

Rabbi Kook’s Advice for ‘Corona Zionists’

Like Doves Flying Home

In the 1930s, a group of new immigrants visited Rav Kook in Jerusalem. The Jewish refugees had fled Germany, forced to leave behind most of their wealth and property.

As the chief rabbi met with them, he felt the depth of their dejection and unhappiness.

Wishing to boost their spirits, Rav Kook quoted Isaiah’s comforting words of consolation. With poetic imagery, the prophet described Jerusalem’s amazement as her children — the Jewish people — suddenly return after long years of exile:

 

מִי אֵלֶּה כָּעָב תְּעוּפֶינָה וְכַיּוֹנִים אֶל אֲרֻבֹּתֵיהֶם.

“Who are these? They fly like clouds, like doves returning to their cotes!” (Isaiah 60:8)

What is the difference, Rav Kook asked the new arrivals, between the flight of a cloud and that of a dove? Why did Isaiah use these two analogies?

Clouds and Doves

A cloud, he explained, moves involuntarily. Buffeted by storms and strong winds, clouds are pushed from place to place.

The dove, however, is a different story. It flies where it wishes to travel. Longing for home, the dove returns to its beloved nest.

Isaiah foresaw that the Jews returning to the Land of Israel would not be a homogenous group. Some would arrive charged with idealism. Stirred by powerful yearnings to return to their homeland, they would come like doves returning to their cotes.

But other Jews would migrate because violent storms uprooted them from their countries. With few available options, they would find themselves in the Land of Israel, wandering like the involuntary movement of clouds.

Rav Kook then spoke directly to the new immigrants:

Even those who arrive like displaced clouds can find within themselves the longings of a dove wanting to come home. Once you have discovered these aspirations within, you will be able to make your homes here in joy and happiness. As it says,

 

וּפְדוּיֵי ה’ יְשׁוּבוּן וּבָאוּ צִיּוֹן בְּרִנָּה וְשִׂמְחַת עוֹלָם עַל רֹאשָׁם.
שָׂשׂוֹן וְשִׂמְחָה יַשִּׂיגוּן נָסוּ יָגוֹן וַאֲנָחָה.

 

“Those whom God redeemed will return.
Singing, they will enter Zion;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
while sorrow and sighing will flee away.” (Isaiah 51:11)

 

(Adapted from Mo’adei HaRe’iyah pp. 148-149)

From Rav Kook Torah, here.

Corona Scare [IN ISRAEL] Means Less Early Deaths Overall…

Shmuel Sackett September 27, 2020

In no way does this article mean to minimize the pain many people have suffered due to Covid-19. It has brought sickness and death to thousands of people. It has caused financial problems, marital problems, and psychological problems. The Covid-19 pandemic is not a laughing matter and we must all observe the medical guidelines and safety procedures. Recently, a Rav I am close with told me how things in his Monsey community have “returned to normal”. He boasted that they have kiddushes and Shalosh Seudas meals together and even “eat from each other’s plates”. Yesterday, he emailed me that he has Covid and asked that I daven for him…
My outlook on this – and things like it – is simple. While I do not ignore the sadness, tragedies, and danger, I try – as best as I can – to see the positive as well. Unfortunately, I am far from being a “Gam Zu Le’Tova” (this too is for the best) guy, but I do try to see the good and focus on it. During this past Shabbat Shuva I pushed myself to see the good in the Covid-19 challenge that Hashem has sent our way… and then I went one step further. I not only want to see the good, I want to thank Hashem for the good!
Therefore, even though we are still extremely far from this being over – and many challenges still lie ahead – I plan on thanking Hashem, on Yom Kippur, for the following 19 things. When a daughter of mine asked me what the connection was to Yom Kippur, I answered the following: Maybe we have to do teshuva for not recognizing these good, positive things. Obviously, Hashem has sent this pandemic for a reason and it will continue until we learn these lessons. Everything our King does has a purpose and a message and if we don’t understand that message… the lesson may still continue. So, dearest friends, let’s stop complaining and start focusing. I don’t have all the answers – and I struggle with many of these things myself – but after 7 months of living with the Covid-19 pandemic, let’s do our best to see the good that has come out of this and ask forgiveness from Hashem for only seeing the bad.

  1. Jewish unity – people have started davening near homes and in parks and for the first time ever, Sefardim, Ashkenazim, Yemenites, and Chabadniks are davening together. All kidding aside; that’s an unbelievable accomplishment!
  2.  Family time – people are home more and spending much more time with the family
  3. My father is home! – I spoke to a teenage boy recently who told me the following: “My father’s usually flying all over the world, but since March he is running his business from home. I feel like I got my father back!”
  4. Pesach like it used to be – with the hotel programs canceled, people actually spent Pesach “the old-fashioned way” and loved it!
  5. More Torah – I don’t know about you, but I am learning more (thanks to Zoom) than ever before. With just one click I attend a daf yomi shiur in Bnei Brak, 2 hours later I am zooming into a shiur in Jerusalem and then 2 hours later I am watching Rav Moshe Weinberger in NY.
  6. Quarantine tzaddikim – Everyone who has been in quarantine told me that they learned Mishnayot, read some good seforim and studied the parsha like never before.
  7. Davening slowly – When shuls were (or still are) closed, we all had to daven at home. At first, this was a major knockout punch but then we all discovered something amazing… The Siddur! We took our time, focused on every word, and concentrated on what we were saying.
  8. The best Rosh Ha’Shana ever! – An 81-year-old friend of mine told me that this Rosh Ha’Shana he davened in the backyard of someone’s home. Everyone (all 20 of them) kept their distance from each other so… “there was no talking, just davening and singing. It was the most beautiful Rosh Hashana davening of my life.” This was his exact quote.
  9. Quiet in shul – For those of us still in shul (while strictly following the rules), the davening has changed for the better. It’s quieter and much more serious. Nobody misses the kiddushes or the big social scene. We are in Hashem’s house and we all feel it.
  10. Downsizing simchas – How many people went into heavy debt just so they could “keep up with the Shwartz’s” and make a fancy wedding for their kids? Not these days! Simple weddings with limited people and guess what? The young couples are as happy as ever.
  11. Taking our health seriously – Avoiding Covid-19 has made us more aware of our health. As a result, most of us have begun living healthier lifestyles. Only good will come from this.
  12. Aliyah applications are up – The Jewish Agency and Nefesh b’Nefesh are reporting major increases in the number of people applying for Aliyah. This is always good news but remember the rule; Come to Israel because you want to, not because you have
  13. Ex-Israelis returning home – Hundreds of thousands of ex-Israelis living all over the world are expected to return to Israel within the next 3 years. This is especially true for those who have been living outside Israel for 10-20 years. Enough is enough… they’re coming home.
  14. Appreciation is up – For people who made Aliyah and are already living in Israel, the “appreciation level” is way up. Yes, we certainly have our challenges here, but we are thankful for dealing with this in Israel and not elsewhere.
  15. Thank you, Teachers! – The Covid challenge has given us a new outlook on teachers. Teaching classes on Zoom or in classrooms with “capsules” or “pods” are far more difficult, yet they do it with tremendous dedication and sacrifice.
  16. Palestinian – When is the last time you heard that fake word? Who cares? They have literally fallen off the radar.
  17. Much less public “chilul Shabbat” – I live on a main street in Israel which, unfortunately, is usually very busy on Shabbat. For the last few weeks, almost no cars… The roads on Rosh Ha’Shana looked like a ghost town, restaurants and malls are closed on Shabbat as well. Think about that.
  18. Less people dying – Although many have died from Covid, the overall death rate in Israel in the last 7 months is lower than ever! I checked the numbers myself with several “Chevra Kadisha” workers who have told me that it’s 100% true… less people have died in Mar-Sept 2020 than in the same period in the last 10 years!
  19. And finally, to end this list with some humor; I thank Hashem that the pandemic is called Covid-19 and not Covid-27 because I am out of ideas!!

All kidding aside, as we enter the holiest day of the year, let’s ask Hashem to forgive us for not seeing the good and positive in these challenging times. Let’s convince ourselves, and our Father and King, that we have learned the lessons and have internalized their messages… so that there’s no need for this to continue. G’mar chatima tova to one and all!