“Yikes,” typed the chemo pharmacist supervisor. “Rough regimen.”

I blanched. I had just ordered a chemotherapy plan for my young patient. It’s the same regimen I received when I was 22.

It’s the first time I’m treating someone with the same rare cancer I had. After cycle 1, she came back to the clinic.

I could have written her wrap-up word for word.

“I felt like I was going to die,” she said bluntly.

(Check.)

“By the fifth day of chemo, I prayed to die.”

(Check.)

“I couldn’t form words anymore.”

(Check.)

This arrived last night and I already finished it.

A must read for halachic people whose loved ones have a cancer diagnosis.

This covers so many topics in concise and readable language: 1. Cancer screenings: allowed, or actually mandatory?
2. Genetic cancer screening: allowed or mandatory?
3. Common cancer statistics and treatment modalities
4. Preventative surgeries or treatment: allowed or mandatory?
5. Halacha on medicine in general

If you condemn Israel for Palestinian suffering but you omit Hamas, you might just hate Jews.

If you fault Israel for Palestinian suffering but you omit Qatar’s role, you might just hate Jews. If you condemn Palestinian suffering but you didn’t condemn the Hamas massacre, you might just hate Jews.

If you condemned Israel for blowing up a hospital and didn’t post a retraction and correction, you might just hate Jews.

Many people are arguing that “context” is needed to understand the slaughter by Hamas.

As a student of Jewish history, I agree, and I offer context.

We start with the first expulsion of Jews in Israel, in 586 BCE by the Babylonians.

1/ Under the Persian ruler King Cyrus, Jews rebuilt their Temple and returned to Jerusalem for several hundred years.

The Romans captured the city and dispersed the Jews in 70 CE.

The Jewish people migrated west and south, living in Europe and North Africa for centuries.

2/

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.

Here’s what happened when I agreed to debate anti-vaccine women.

I set my rules.

They fled.

https://twitter.com/marcusblimi/status/1420416729440784384

My rules:

https://twitter.com/marcusblimi/status/1420104194174984197

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.

https://twitter.com/changeyss/status/1627380146343927808

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.”

Rabbi Dr. Aaron Glatt on Physician and Rabbinical Burnout, at CHEMED’s annual medical ethics conference Insurance companies: the universal enemy

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.

https://twitter.com/Ostrov_A/status/1607696910302990344

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.

A story about anti-vaccine harassment:

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.”

I was warned that there’s a mad blog post about my vaccine education circulating, where I “collude” to “spin data” on natural immunity.

It’s nonsense but the irony is rich because of how vocally I advocated for studying, disseminating, and discussing infection-acquired immunity. Indeed, I argued strongly with the NYC commissioner of health to tailor messaging to the frum community to acknowledge of infection-acquired immunity.

And I argued in an op-Ed to the NYT (they rejected it) that this immunity should count towards vaccine passports.

Bite sized polio info, for social media sharing:

For day 17 of National Immunization Awareness Month let’s discuss shedding, one of the bonker beliefs of the anti-vax movement.

Viral shedding refers to virus that leaves the body in any waste.

Shedding according to the AV refers to people shedding live virus AFTER VACCINATION. First, most vaccines in the US do not contain live virus. Which do?

- Intranasal flu
- MMR
- Chickenpox
- rotavirus

This means there is a THEORETICAL risk of the live virus causing illness in the individual.

Except… it doesn’t HAPPEN except for ultra-rare occurrences.

“You need to come back aqui in dos hermanas,” I said to my Spanish-speaking patient.

Bursts of laughter erupted from 5 of the curtained cubicles of the infusion center I supervise.

“What?” I asked, bewildered.

The patient’s daughter smiled at me politely and said, “semanas.” What?” I asked again.

The 39 year old black woman with stage IV breast cancer leaned out of her seat and said, “SAY-MAH-NAS.”

The 70 year old Greek gentleman with lung cancer, here for his carbo-alimta-keytruda stuck his head around the curtain and echoed her, “SEMANAS.”

For day 15 of National Immunization Awareness Month, we’re going to discuss a tangentially-related subject: vitamins.

In the absence of vaccines, people turn to what they believe are “natural products” that your body “needs.”

This is a $120 BILLION industry! There is a huge nutraceutical/vitamin overlap with anti-vaccine proponents, and many leaders sell products.

If your provider or guru sells something, stay away.

Today’s post for day 6 of National Immunization Awareness Month will be brief, since it is erev Shabbos.

Candy Land was invented in 1948 by 30-year old schoolteacher Eleanor Abbott who contracted polio. She recovered in the polio ward of a hospital - with dozens of children. Many were in iron lungs, many were paralyzed, all were confined and isolated together.

And Eleanor, a teacher, created Candy Land for them, where children who could no longer move freely could dance their pawn along a colored, meandering, candy-strewn path.

For day 4 of National Immunization Awareness month, I’m going to address the rumor that physicians get pharma/govt kickbacks for every vaccine they administer.

False.

But guess who DOES try to incentivize physicians to keep vaccine rates up?

INSURANCE COMPANIES.

GUESS WHY. Because vaccines work!

And they’d rather cover $20 per vaccine than the medical bills you’ll run up when you get sick from a preventable disease!

Insurance companies know that vaccines work, and that they’re safe, and they’re PUTTING THEIR MONEY ON IT.

Day 3 of National Immunization Awareness Month and I’m talking about MEASLES PERCEPTION.

“routine” childhood disease
“rite of passage”
“Measles strengthens” children
“got us out of school”

These are common distortions of a disease that historically was viewed very differently. It’s easy to pretend measles is a benign childhood rite of passage when you haven’t ACTUALLY experienced an outbreak.

But endemic measles hasn’t existed in 60 years! So, how DID people perceive measles when large outbreaks hit towns and cities?

Look at historical literature.

Day 2 of National Immunization Awareness Month and today’s tidbit is on childhood immunizations and childhood cancer.

Data shows that inflammation (caused by disease) plays a role in cancer development, and studies on vaccinated children support this. Findings:

1. Children born in counties with ⬆️ Hep B vaccine coverage had ⬇️ odds of all cancers combined.

2. A ⬇️ odds for leukemia was associated at the county level with ⬆️ rates of the poliovirus vaccine.

A primer on sources and how to know what to trust:

A. Peer reviewed studies. This means it’s been double checked by others to ensure you’re not making up lies.

B. Repeated studies. A single finding is worthless if it can’t be found again.

C. Timely studies. Data moves fast. D. Sample size. A study on 8 folks isn’t exciting, unless, again, it’s replicated and enlarged.

E. If using websites, filter out nonsense by using .edu or .org

F. Read the “About Us” on websites to detect slants or biases.