With vaccination turning into theater with anti-vax leadership gaining money and popularity, here is what will happen in the frum community:
More people will refuse vaccines for their children and themselves
Measles will return. AV parents will not report these cases.
This happened in 2019, when a total of 1,200 cases were reported but the real numbers were internally rumored to be in the 5-digit range.
A hundred or so will be hospitalized and a few dozen will be in critical care.
Hopefully not more, but I suspect it’ll be higher.
The city and state will respond with pleas to vaccinate and will enact emergency measures.
Jewish leadership will cry anti-Semitism.
@AgudahNews will host a PR vaccine drive. Adults who are immune will show up in droves. It’ll look great. Kids won’t be there.
Yossi Gestetner will insist frum kids are vaccinated and will take out an ad in Times Square. When asked how come polio and measles happens in Rockland County, he’ll conveniently be unavailable.
Vaccinated Jews will get mad at this media exposure and rage against the AV parents.
The AV parents will complain they’re being discriminated against. @VINNews and @YWN will have editorials about achdus and the third Bais Hamikdash.
Meanwhile, here’s what will happen in hospitals, and pay attention:
An airborne disease, measles will entirely disrupt all hospital operations. Tented cots and drapes beds will be used in ERs with isolation rooms, and nurses now need to add time to don and doff PPE. Rooms need to be sterilized between use and left empty for 2 hours.
Hatzalah members, clear Orthodox Jews, will be screened at emergency room entrances, delaying care. Hospital staff need to ensure EMTs aren’t carrying measles.
Frum zip codes will trigger alerts in hospital systems.
Cancer hospitals won’t allow their own patients in, if they come from frum zip codes. They can’t risk their other patients.
Ask Chai Lifeline about this. Children with cancer will need to be diverted to other hospitals.
This happened in 2019.
Parents who cannot show proof of MMR vaccination, or who have symptoms, cannot visit their own children.
Some will lie to get into hospitals and make others sick.
My only regret at attending CHEMED’s medical ethics conference is that I didn’t join for the full weekend.
Spending time with hundreds of leading rabbis and MDs was rejuvenating because in every topic we were reminded that Jewish law suffers no fools when it comes to medicine.
Jewish law dictates that we follow science, evidence, public health, norms, and what is logical, plausible, sensible.
We know this but it helps to be reminded that the fringes of society that choose to embrace unproven or disproven gut theories are not following the law.
Rav Asher Weiss on “COVID: Where Did We Go Wrong?”
“It is incumbent on providers to provide care, and it is a chiyuv (mandate) for patients to follow guidance.”
“We must believe in God and trust Him, but we are mandated to seek healing from providers.”
“If a patient refuses treatment because he only relies on God, we need to force him to receive treatment and Halacha does not recognize patient autonomy.”
I’m largely off twitter these days but stepping in to comment on this.
I had a 20-minute discussion with the journalist who wrote this piece. Lena and I have spoken frequently on the resurgence of vaccine preventable illnesses and featured my work in the past.
We had a good discussion on A. the inappropriateness of featuring Chassidim in an article about measles in Somali Americans, and B. The huge increase, the exponential rise in anti-semitic violence experienced by visibly Jewish people.
I requested that she continue to do importance science reporting but recognize the damage that poor journalism or poor photojournalism does to us.
I spent 30 minutes on the phone with an important person in the community who runs a highly regarded non-profit health organization. I asked them to endorse polio vaccination messaging.
They refused.
I couldn’t understand it.
Finally they exploded: “Do you have any idea what I was subjected to during COVID? Anti-vaxxers would call me day and night, week after week, to put warnings against the COVID vaccine in my organization materials.
I refused, for two years. The harassment didn’t stop.”
“They left boxes of anti-COVID propaganda magazines on my doorstep. They thought I’ll distribute it?? I THREW IT OUT.”
“They don’t leave me alone.”
“I cannot put my name on vaccine education.”
And I don’t blame them.
The methods of anti-vaxxers are exceptionally low.