By that logic, traffic laws should also be abolished, along with the government’s blunt intervention in our free driving (police, courts, fines, license suspension). Let citizens take responsibility for their own lives, and that’s it. By the way, that intervention doesn’t help either, since road accidents are here to stay and keep happening all the time. Truly nonsense that only reinforces the prevailing opinion (to my surprise, it turns out that sometimes even the majority can be right).

Michi,
I won’t address your fundamental position right now (which in my view is flawed) regarding the corona regime, but only the “absurd comparisons” you claim to have found in the article. There are no comparisons there at all.
Then in your second response you try to build another story on something that didn’t exist in the first place, and you create your own comparison (abolishing traffic laws) in order to mock the original “comparison.” As if, just because no one proposes doing the second thing, it’s also unreasonable to do the first…
Did you really identify in the article a view parallel to your comparison? Where?

The comparison to traffic law is correct. The issue is that there there is a balance (the laws combine safety needs with preserving the flow of traffic), whereas with corona they’re still acting as if this were an emergency, without internalizing the reality that there is a new disease in the world and that isn’t going to change. Example: instead of imposing restrictions in order to prevent the healthcare system from collapsing, the system should be re-budgeted according to the new reality. That can take time, but it needs to start.

It reminds me very much of how the water sector was handled: for years they tried to convince the public that we were in a drought and had to save water, until it was finally internalized that this is Israel’s water reality and a shift was needed toward desalination (a solution that had existed for many years; see, for example, the desalination facilities in Eilat).

Just to note—I myself chose to be fully vaccinated. Even so, I oppose most of the restrictions on the unvaccinated.

Avi, you and I probably share the same critical stance toward the crazy corona regime in Israel and around the world.
That’s not what I was talking about.
What I said to Michi, who is not in the same boat as we are, is that he referred to comparisons in the article that simply were never there. He just invented something out of thin air that doesn’t exist there.
The second thing I told him is that if he chooses the traffic comparison, then he needs to be precise. You yourself actually were precise, since you spoke about balance.
That’s all.

Traffic laws are written in blood.

The fascists paint the world in blood for the innocent, and the frightened innocents believe them.

When I spoke about comparisons, that really was an imprecise term. I meant implicit comparisons to other infringements on rights and to parallel situations in which, supposedly, there is no justification for infringement because it doesn’t help. The traffic example I gave is an excellent example of why seeing corona decrees as an infringement of rights is nonsense. That comparison also illustrates why the fact that the phenomenon continues does not mean it is wrong to impose restrictions.
Traffic laws, too, are administered as though we were in a state of emergency. If you think about it, you’ll see that they prohibit us from entering certain situations and places and lanes, they arrest us, fine us, police officers dictate to us what to do and what not to do, no less than with corona—except that we’ve gotten used to it. There too one could argue that it isn’t an emergency, since this has been our constant state of life for far longer than corona.
I also sometimes have criticism of the corona regime, though I do not think it is crazy. But the claim based on rights, and the claim that this regime doesn’t help, are of course complete nonsense.

The connection between corona and traffic is weak.
In a democratic state, the majority decides. And the majority understands that a traffic accident leads to death. And the majority can do whatever it wants.

With corona, a group of people got together and decided that secret PCR tests in secret labs for the existence of a virus of secret origin—when the public has no access to those labs and cannot examine or confirm the decisions made according to anti-scientific guidelines (taking the tested person’s history into account in interpreting the result) issued by the World Health Organization (thanks to which corona is celebrating around the world)—all this is enough to treat a person as if he were a Jew during the Holocaust.

And of course the group of frightened people who don’t have the faintest idea what is really going on accept what they’re told while their minds are paralyzed.

So first of all, we’ve gotten aligned regarding the comparisons that were—and especially were not—in the article in question.
Now we can deal with the comparison to traffic laws. As is known, comparisons are in many cases only partial, but even in such cases they can have didactic value—we learn from them precisely about the differences between the analogy and what it is meant to illustrate.
That is also the case regarding traffic laws and the handling of potential traffic offenders, in comparison to “corona offenders.”

1. Risk assessment: our knowledge and experience regarding the disease and regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the means used to deal with it (vaccines, drugs, lockdowns, isolation, etc.) are still developing, and in any case there are major disputes about all of this even among the experts. That is not the case with potential traffic offenses. Here everyone agrees that hard-core violations such as drunk driving, crossing a solid white line, driving at a speed unsuited to road conditions, failing to stop at a red light, etc.—all of these are dangerous, and therefore it is justified to infringe the rights of those who drive that way. And I haven’t even begun to talk about the differences between the damage caused by accidents and the damage caused by corona.
2. Scope of the infringement on rights: the rights of a traffic offender will be taken away mainly in the limited arena in which he committed his offenses—on the road. By contrast, the rights of the “corona offender” are taken from him in a multiplicity of arenas. One might perhaps argue that this follows from the fact that the corona offender indeed operates in multiple arenas (unlike the road offender), and therefore such broad infringement is justified. But such a claim again shows just how great the differences are between the two phenomena.
3. Corona is a global phenomenon in which events in different places around the world directly affect every country. Here economic forces and various biases enter the picture regarding the regime of restrictions. This is very far from being similar to what happens with traffic laws. Does it occur to anyone that the prohibition on crossing at a red light was created mainly to serve some economic interest, hidden or open?
4. The Israeli media mostly fall into line with the corona regime, and in so doing contribute to the imposition of a shallow and biased discourse on the issue. Clearly, with regard to traffic offenders this problem does not exist (and if the media do indeed mobilize against traffic offenders, who would even think of complaining about that?).
5. The social and psychological costs of the corona regime—even if they were justified—are almost unbearable. That is not the case with the “costs” society pays for infringing the rights of potential traffic offenders.

Those are just a few points to illustrate the differences between infringements on rights in the corona context and the same kind of infringement with respect to traffic offenders.

I didn’t see here even one relevant difference.
1. With regard to corona too there is a fairly broad consensus (the argument is only over dosage levels). On anything in the world you can find a few experts who express other opinions. And regarding the risk involved in vaccines, the consensus is almost absolute, so not taking a vaccine is just madness and paranoia. This difference—which in my view doesn’t really exist—is actually to the disadvantage of traffic laws. Here decisions have to be made under conditions of uncertainty, and we don’t have the privilege of waiting until all the information is in our hands. Smart-alecks making armchair proposals would do better to focus on traffic laws.
2. I don’t see any difference in the scope of the infringement on rights. They don’t let me drive at the speed and in the places I want. They fine me for various crossings. Very similar. And the biggest difference is that with regard to corona I have the option of getting vaccinated and avoiding the restrictions, whereas with regard to traffic laws I do not.
3. Absolutely. The requirement to wear a reflective vest was created from a clear economic interest. Parking laws were also created from such interests. Seat belts and safety equipment in general too. Exactly the same thing. By contrast, the lockdown was not created by an economic interest (except perhaps Zoom) but against everyone’s interest. Only with vaccines are there interests, and there it went through testing and there is a very broad consensus around them. Paranoia, as I said.
4. Based on your assumption that there is no consensus, you think the media are falling into line. But that itself is a paranoid and baseless statement.
5. There absolutely are costs to traffic restrictions. People are denied movement by car, required to make large payments in order to do so, and so on.
In short, these are just disingenuous arguments. Pointless discussion.

I posted this article here because in my opinion it is an excellent article that explains what our position should be after nearly two years of corona and the understanding that neither a lockdown nor a vaccine will make this virus go away. The understanding that corona policy (and not corona itself) causes many health problems (physical and mental) and many economic problems.

I don’t know what environment the Rabbi is in or what opinions he is exposed to, but from what I can tell he lives in a media echo chamber that amplifies the dangers and the virus and does not expose him to the known side effects of the vaccine, the insane waiting lines for mental health professions over the last year and a half, the bankruptcies, the suicides, the divorces, the heart attacks, the obesity, the diabetes, and the third-grade children who can’t read and write. He simply doesn’t live there.
About a media echo chamber:
https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%91%D7%AA_%D7%AA%D7%94%D7%95%D7%93%D7%94_(%D7%AA%D7%A7%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%AA)

So yes, this article calls on us to change the record, change the conception, get some perspective. I’m sorry that the Rabbi tried to make an absurd comparison with traffic laws. It’s also a shame that the Rabbi didn’t address the first sections and only addressed the second part, which perhaps was more convenient for him. The first sections actually speak about trust in the authorities, and it’s a shame the Rabbi didn’t address that.

In the context of trust, I’ll add that under the cover of corona a lot of nonsense has been coming out (more than usual) from the heads of our government. Corona has become a tool through which anything the government wants can be done without investing in reasonable and fair explanations to the citizens.
Take for example Bennett’s statement regarding the new isolation guidelines:
https://news.walla.co.il/item/3479600
“If you’re vaccinated and came into contact with a confirmed case—test negative and continue your life, while trying not to endanger others. If you’re not vaccinated—go home…
We’re telling vaccinated people: continue with your lives, be careful around vulnerable people, but for unvaccinated people you’re at increased risk, and therefore during this period we want you to be more protected.”

Bennett gave the rationale of protecting the unvaccinated after he was confronted with the fact that most infections are among the vaccinated (you can’t upload screenshots here, but you can go into the Ministry of Health dashboard and see for yourself: more infections both in the absolute number and relative to the size of the groups). But how exactly does putting the unvaccinated person into isolation protect him? After all, going into isolation happens after exposure. Isolation only makes sense for preventing infection—but then what do you do with the vaccinated, who are actually the ones causing the trouble? In short, just another way for the government to coerce vaccination. To make life miserable for the unvaccinated. I have no idea how the Rabbi doesn’t see that (or sees it but legitimizes it)?

The Rabbi’s trust in the media regarding corona—to the point that from his perspective “the media are falling into line” is a “paranoid and baseless statement”—does not get support from several media people who have started to break the wall of silence a bit. See the excellent article by Alon Ben David. He may be a military correspondent, but he has a lot to say about what he sees from the inside:
https://www.maariv.co.il/journalists/Article-884523
Highly recommended.
And beyond that I would suggest that the Rabbi study an important concept in media studies called the “spiral of silence”:

https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%9C%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%94

For the above reasons, it seems to me that I’ll take the Rabbi’s advice from one of the recent responsa this week regarding Rabbi Walder (and of course the cases are vastly different), and follow the path of Rabbi Meir—he ate the inside and threw away the peel. And there is a lot of substance in Rabbi Abraham. I don’t think there is any point anymore in trying to persuade him of our position.

Have a good week

1. You’re mistaken. True, most professionals are still somewhere on the spectrum leaning more favorably toward the corona regime, but there are many serious people among them (see the Public Emergency Council for the Corona Crisis, for example) who argue otherwise. Regarding the vaccines: indeed there is broad agreement about their advantages for risk groups, but much less agreement regarding their potential harm for those not in those groups. As for the need to decide under conditions of uncertainty, the difficulty comes back to you: the conduct regarding vaccines for those not in the risk group requires exactly the same responsibility that you want to remove from your own shoulders.
2. Scope of the infringement on rights: first of all, the infringement here applies to everyone (including the vaccinated). But the main point, according to your view—that in order for the unvaccinated person to regain his rights he only needs to get vaccinated—again confuses our comparison. After all, he fears the vaccine and therefore stands on his right not to receive it. And it is precisely that basic right that you want to deny him… Does that seem similar to someone who feels like running a red light and feels injured because they took away this “right” from him??
3. True, the main economic interests in the background of corona are in the vaccines (and soon probably also in the drugs). Isn’t that enough to sharply distinguish between the situation on the roads and the situation with corona? Do you really not understand the suspicions regarding the policy of the Israeli government on vaccines in light of the agreement with Pfizer? Is that similar in any way to “suspicions” regarding what lies behind the obligation to stop at a red light?
4. My subjective impression, and that of many others, is that the media voluntarily fell into line with the establishment. In your view, is that not supported by statistics and facts?
5. As for what you said about the prices paid by drivers (including traffic offenders)—well, here I really have nothing intelligent to say to you. I’m sure that if you think about the matter again, you’ll understand that what you said is not connected to the discussion.

We’re repeating ourselves. I’m done.

Regards.

A pointless argument

The Rabbi is entrenching himself in his position that there is a consensus about the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines, and dismisses with contempt any other opinion (without addressing the substance of the arguments, which goes against the whole outlook he has been teaching for years)

Very disappointing, but it is what it is.

Maybe only with the perspective of years will it be possible to hope for a sobering-up from this fanatical faith in the medical establishment..