GM @aefeldman. Mass testing of Coronavirus took place in Williamsburg/Borough Park on Sunday which is days before the Tuesday call with the WH. Yeshivas were going to be closed by end of Tuesday in line with Cuomo’s order that private schools should shut by Wednesday.
.@aefeldman Some people are hung up on a narrative and they seem to see everything through that perspective. For example, instead of reporting that Hasidim took Coronavirus so serious that hundreds got tested in one day (Sunday), the narrative is that there is a “spike” of cases
among Hasidim. If you test more, you will see a spike in cases, but the outsized testing is not in the headlines. Sad is if the focus were on tests the narrative would be “how do Hasidim have tests when it is so difficult for others to get a test?” Hasidim can never win!
36 hours before the WH call, the large Hasidic Yeshiva where my oldest attends sent a memo saying to expect a shutdown depending what officials will guide. @NYGovCuomo gave until Wednesday (a day after he and BDB were yelling bloody that schools should remain open indefinitely).
.@aefeldman The point is that rules and recommendations are changing very swiftly and Yeshivas were on path with those rules before any WH call and the masses were in long line for tests by Sunday as per the media/political buzzword last week of testing testing testing. Thanks.
As for the access to testing in Hasidic areas (see folks? Hasidim can never win; we always need to defend against accusations. “No tests.” WHY NO TESTS? “Mass testing.” HOW DO YOU HAVE TESTS? Ok, haters. I will explain.) Many years ago, health insurers started pushing the idea to
open Urgent Care Centers to detect health issues early and to ease the pressure off of hospitals. Entrepreneurs in the Hasidic Community jumped into action, and all neighborhoods have now an abundance of such centers. At a time when people were tweeting about shutting down NYC,
those UCS operators got on the phone to get tests. Hence they were able to have many tests available. The other point is that NY State alone needs 10s of thousands of tests daily so in the big pic, those Urgent Care Centers don’t even have access to that many kits. Meaning, the
lock of tens of thousands of tests in NY State does not mean you can’t get batches of a few hundred (if you gave in requests early enough). Reporters who fail to know all of the above in this thread failed to do any research and probably failed at math while in school.
.@aefeldman Here is another point: @NYGovCuomo & @BilldeBlasio were yelling Sunday early PM that schools should remain open. They changed their minds within hours which is fine; I am not judging their move on this at this time. But 60% of the Orthodox Jewish population is under
the age of 18 while only 21% of the rest of NY is. Hence, closing down schools in this community is a longer process; parents need more preparation. So if Sunday 1:30 PM the policy was that schools can remain open, then closing it by end of Tuesday is an orderly process.
