Hyehudi.org

Excerpts from a blog article:

Even now, two years into the #ForeverPlague, I still hear people talking about getting Covid as if they were admitting to having an STD–always in hushed tones with eyes askance. It’s as if the only way a person can be infected is if they are reckless with their health and careless about everyone else, or if they’re a knuckle-dragging science denier whose backwards lifestyle begs to be punished by such an illness. After all, it’s the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” who deserve a long, dark winter of sadness and death, or somesuch.

Weird how even people who are vaccinated can get the disease. Also people who are super careful. Even people in Antarctic research stations.

…

So much of the public conversation about Covid seems couched in shame and exclusion language, and that nonsense needs to end.

Here’s the reality about Covid-19, gang:

• It’s a respiratory virus, so it’s never going to be eradicated. We’ll have to figure out how to live with it, just like we live with influenza.
• Treatments will continue to be developed and improve. More options will become available for both prevention and treatment.
• Vaccines don’t protect against ever getting infected. It stinks, but it’s true. However, vaccines *do* seem to make subsequent bouts of the illness easier to manage. We can discuss and dispute over whether or not that’s sufficient justification for getting it versus the possible risks and side effects.
• We should all be free to make the decision about vaccines without external compulsion of any kind. This should be stupidly self-evident, but there you go.
• Natural immunity is usually better than artificial immunity. Artificial immunity is probably better than simply living with higher vulnerability due to comorbidities.
• We can do a lot of things to boost our immune systems and give ourselves the best chance to fight off the #ForeverPlague. Take good-quality supplements for Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and zinc. Get plenty of fresh air and sunshine. Drink water. Sleep sufficiently. Eat good-quality food.
• If you test positive, talk to your own doctor (and not some whacko on the internet) about what treatments and medications may be appropriate for you personally based on your medical history and current health status. Again, talk to YOUR doctor and make a decision with YOUR doctor’s input.
• Pay attention to your symptoms and don’t be a doofus and go out in public when you’re clearly sick. It’s not rocket surgery.

To address the end of the video above: yes, people are deciding to go back to work, go back to school, and move on with life. The virus should be taken seriously, but we still have to move on. It’s not the bubonic plague, killing a third of the population in a matter of months or years; with some basic preventative and/or supportive care, 99% of folks who get Covid will be okay in a few weeks. The rest, we can all try to watch out for and help out as we can.

And ultimately, I believe that whether or not you catch the ‘Rona is in God’s hands. Do your best, be wise about it, and trust the sovereignty of the King of the Universe. Our days are in His hands, and we’re not even promised our next breath. So just chill out and be grateful for His myriad blessings.

See the rest here…

Reprinted with permission.

וז”ל במקור (אות י”א):

ירגיל את עצמו להתפלל בכל כחו, ובקול המעורר הכוונה להדבק המחשבה לדיבור, ופניו אל הכותל בתוך סידור התפילה בבוקר ובערב, ולא יסתכל לצדדין מתחילת התפילה עד סופה, ובחזרת הש”ץ השמונה עשרה יעיין בסידור לענות אמן בכל כחו על כל ברכה וברכה, ובשעת קריאת התורה להטות אזנו על כל דיבור ודיבור מהקורא כקורא את המגילה, ולעשות עצמו כאילם בבית הכנסת, אפילו קודם התפלה ואחריה עד הליכתו לביתו.

Some excerpts:

Reliance on censorship by itself, writes Doidge, automatically undermines any claim to speak in the name of science — and rather than increasing confidence in science, diminishes it. Yet throughout the Covid pandemic, major media platforms have conducted a nonstop onslaught on dissenting views and exerted efforts to shut down “misinformation,” even when that so-called misinformation came from leading scientists at Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford.

The Royal Society recently protested efforts by governments and social media platforms to combat harmful scientific misinformation via content removal. Such measures, concluded the Royal Society, only drive true misinformation to harder-to-address corners of the internet, while exacerbating feelings of distrust in authorities.

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Taken together, the impossibility of achieving herd immunity, the demonstration that the vaccinated can still transmit the virus, and the failure of most vaccine mandates to take into account natural immunity, combine to undermine the main pillars of the case for vaccine mandates.

Doidge nevertheless concludes on a tentatively optimistic note, as he reflects on all that has been learned about Covid in the last two years, through a frequent reappraisal of the governing assumptions, much of it by those initially in the minority. And with that recognition goes a call to “give infallibility the day off” so that we can go on reappraising and adding to our medical tool kit against Covid. Perhaps we can even learn to treat one another with respect rather than as mortal enemies.

Continue reading on Mishpacha here…

See a related article by the same author on “safetyism” here.

Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits of Britain is quoted saying:

Now in Judaism, we know of no intrinsic rights. Indeed there is no word for rights in the very language of the Hebrew Bible and of the classic sources of Jewish law. In the moral vocabulary of the Jewish discipline of life we speak of human duties, not of human rights, of obligations, not entitlement. The Decalogue is a list of Ten Commandments, not a Bill of Human Rights.

Gross misunderstanding!

The libertarian Non-Aggression Principle is a negative commandment against initiating unjust aggression against person or property. (There, I said “commandment“. Are you happy now?)

The idea (progressively weakened) of “rights” is the lack of any GOVERNMENT right to impinge on human rights, or so-called “Negative liberty” (actually a tautology, since Isaiah Berlin’s “Positive liberty” means enslaving some to provide for others). For example, the “Right of Return” is theoretically just an attempt by the state to limit its own “right” to offend against immigrants (אכמ”ל).

Of course, Judaism is not practically libertarian-anarchist, but libertarian-leaning, which means freedom is the default position, with many religious exceptions and qualifications. And we are merely reclaiming the Torah idea they first borrowed from us in the Hebraist movement.

Point is, “Anochi Hashem Elokecha”, and religious duties are always curtailed by secular, coercive institutions, no matter the content.

Illustrated by an old line:

Any time three New Yorkers get into a cab without an argument, a bank has just been robbed.