Q&A: The Fake “Coronavirus Pandemic”
The Fake “Coronavirus Pandemic”
Question
Hello Rabbi,
At the time, I sent here a letter from senior physicians who warned about the government’s exaggerated response to the coronavirus phenomenon. They warned that the cost of the lockdown could be greater than the benefit, and that the government’s policy was too severe.
At the time, the Rabbi more or less dismissed their view.
We are now more than five months into this event, and the facts are (at least in my opinion) unequivocal.
If we agree that the intuitive definition of an epidemic is mortality higher than usual, then the data from the Central Bureau of Statistics shows us that mortality in the period January-July 2020 is lower than in the corresponding period in 2019.
Besides that, we can all see many people who are defined as coronavirus “patients” when at worst they experience something like a mild flu, and sometimes not even that (they feel completely healthy).
True, there are a few patients defined as severe (although here too the definitions are apparently very fluid) — but this is not something we haven’t seen in seasonal flu cases.
In light of all this, isn’t there room to admit: we were wrong, we got swept up in media panic, we were frightened for nothing by an ordinary virus and turned it into the epidemic of the century?
In light of more than five months of experience, can we still not determine that the mountain gave birth to a mouse? (And no, it’s not because of the lockdown.)
Answer
Senior physicians do not make much of an impression on me. There are masses of senior physicians, and each one says something else. Many of them have no clue at all in the field under discussion; some of them play with the data with no connection to reality. Plenty of smart-alecks. The findings you present here are far from being as you describe them. Take a small sample:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jet9CqfBmw
You say the mountain gave birth to a mouse when the death tolls in various countries are far higher than deaths from the flu. And even those who did not die suffer from effects that are not simple at all (depression, impaired perception, and more). Everyone presents a picture that fits the thoughts of his own heart, and it does not have much connection to reality.
You also, for some reason, reject out of hand the claim that the lockdown contributed to these results, apparently because that might interfere with the decisive thesis you are advancing.
In short, before drawing conclusions, it is worth checking the data and not being impressed by the words of “senior physicians.”
The conclusions here are not simple at all and are far from unequivocal, and certainly not in the direction you are talking about. I assume they will still be discussed quite a bit, mainly when we have more perspective.
Discussion on Answer
And you forgot how much effort is being made for that?….
And how much of an increase there is in deaths following the not-very-long reopening after the lockdown….
Reply to K.
What efforts exactly?? With lockdown, without lockdown — no change in mortality.
And what increase in deaths are you talking about?
Are your sources the YNET website and television, or did you bother checking the Central Bureau of Statistics website?
Factually — every month, on average, more than 3,500 people die in this country.
Every month!!!
The coronavirus “dead” are about 600 over half a year.
Some of them (possibly even most) did not die “because of” coronavirus (causality — coronavirus = the cause of death) but “with” coronavirus.
And even so they were reported as coronavirus deaths….
But even by their own method — total mortality this year dropped compared to last year….
I’m a bit amazed by the calm and indifference in the face of a phenomenon of mass psychosis that is selling us horror stories and false scares, while on the way crushing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people..
Where did the well-known critical thinking suddenly disappear to?
Obviously when there’s a lockdown, people don’t die in car accidents.
There are no complications from medical treatments, and no infections from viruses in hospitals.
Especially since when everyone goes around with masks, that also prevents infection from other illnesses.
There’s no point in thinking about Israel by itself when you can see what happened in other countries.
I got a bit disconnected from here, and now I saw the follow-ups.
Alex, you are getting carried away in an extremely rash and superficial way. Maybe that’s good for armchair pilpul. In the U.S. there is a president who thought like you, except that he was in the decision-making position — and go see what the result was. Likewise, it was already mentioned that once the lockdown was eased here, the second wave broke out.
And this whole way of thinking that compares it to the flu seems foolish to me, pardon me. Suppose every year ten thousand people die in the country. So if there are another thousand, there is no need to defend ourselves against that? Maybe we should abolish the army and the police and redirect the resources to the needy. How many are harmed by terrorism each year anyway? (And as we know, the argument that the reason there are few victims is because the police exist is an argument you do not accept.)
And we haven’t even talked about the severe effects of coronavirus on patients who recovered — definitely not like the flu.
Decision-makers must immediately take the serious possibilities into account and not take overly large risks. That’s a privilege for armchair sitters and riders of white donkeys like us.
Itai
Car accidents are marginal, maybe 30-40 a month, and let me remind you that for most of the period people were traveling as usual.
There are no hospital infections — that’s true.
But still — over 80,000 “patients” by their method out of all the tests (carriers, actually), and this is the mortality???
And yes, it’s worth looking at countries similar to Israel in climate and the age of the population… the situation there is similar — there is no drama at all.
With God’s help, 20 Av 5780
Already in the Torah portion of Devarim, two kinds of “Rephaim” are spoken of. There were doctors in the category of “Emim,” who frightened the public and demanded a total lockdown; and there were doctors in the category of “Zamzumim,” who made do with putting a “muzzle” on their faces, and preferred communicating by “Zoom” over a physical meeting. Even the Avvim were careful about gathering and sitting “in villages.”
May it be God’s will that we all have rescue and healing, relief and salvation, a mask and a capsule, that He save us, with God’s help, from “buttons coming out of a button,” namely the coronavirus, which resembles little buttons coming out of one big button.
Regards, Sh”tz
I really don’t agree. If the stringency had been understandable in the first month — fine.
We are seeing with our own eyes the “patients,” a large portion of whom had no idea they were such.
The game with the numbers of severe patients, the stupid instructions to wear a mask in public space, and more.
To sum up — an epidemic of panic and brainwashing.
Looking for countries similar to Israel in terms of climate is nonsense.
After all, the virus struck all over the world in every kind of weather.
And as for the matter itself, Israel at the latitude of Yeruham is like the city of Wuhan. (30.6)
Itai
That the virus “strikes” (more threatening terminology under media influence) all over the world is known.
The question is what the results are.
Take Gaza, for example — one of the most crowded places in the world, with a health system that is, to put it mildly, not great.
At the beginning, the self-styled “experts” warned of mass slaughter there when the virus arrived.
And the virus arrived… and what happened there??
There is no excess mortality…
Same with the Palestinian Authority.
Dr. Yoram Lass was right — the real epidemic is in the media, on social networks, and in our imagination; in reality there is no epidemic at all.
As long as there is no explanation for the differences, this is just throwing sand in people’s eyes.
You can’t just throw out a data point about the Palestinian Authority and decide that we are similar to them and not to Wuhan and Lombardy.
And as for the data, like the rest of Yoram Lass’s nonsense, the lockdown that the Palestinian Authority imposed was far more severe than the lockdown in Israel, and therefore no outbreak was recorded there.
(In non-democratic countries it is much easier to impose a lockdown).
Itai
The legend that the lockdown saved us evaporated a long time ago — even without a lockdown there is no excess mortality.
The moment you crown claims as nonsense without explaining — you’ve closed the door to substantive discussion.
Have a pleasant continuation of your panic attack.
I’m referring only to the claim that there is not and has not been an epidemic in Israel.
In my view, the only piece of data that can almost be treated as a fact is the number of deaths published by the Central Bureau of Statistics.
Cause of death = hypothesis
Death = fact
And like it or not — about 800 fewer people died this year than last year.
Simple conclusion in my opinion — there is no epidemic in this country.