tradeoffs

Most things in life have tradeoffs. Medicine is not exception. Whenever you intervene (and masks are an intervention) there are risks and side effects. We take breathing and oxygen for granted, but how long could you live without them? 30 seconds? Wearing dirty rags on one’s mouth in the summer heat is not an act to embark on lightly. People have died from this. The kids are wearing them 9 hours a day in school. The psychological harm is not to be ignored either.

There are plenty of doctors and scientists who question and even condemn the masks. As for studies, you need time for that and you need controlled data. But the COVID stats are a mess. The chief health official in the state of Illinois said that they mark as a COVID death whenever there is any indication of COVID anti-bodies even in people who died clearly from other causes, people who were in hospices for terminal illnesses with 3 weeks to live. I saw data from the NHS in the UK that only around 1,500 people there have died purely from COVID. The head of Shaarei Tzedeck said that 95% of the COVID deaths in his hospital were people who had a year to live from other maladies and were of people age 85 and older. He said he did not see one COVID death in a healthy young person. In the state of Washington people who died of gunshot wounds were being marked as COVID deaths. A man who died in a motorcycle accident was marked as having a COVID death. Hospitals are being given financial incentives to mark deaths as COVID.

So who is biased? In an atmosphere of hysteria everyone is biased. Government health officials are biased. They want to play it safe so as not to be blamed later. And maybe some enjoy the power too. They stay employed throughout this and keep their pensions while millions lose their jobs. No skin off their apple.

The science is not settled and neither is the halacha. To call wearing masks normative halacha is really stretching it. Just toss around the word normative to get everyone to conform to what you believe. Even better, utter the terms ‘pikuach nefesh’ and ‘rodef.’ Just say them and they become so. No need to prove anything. But do you still get in a car? That’s pikuach nefesh. In Israel 8000 people a year die from smoking induced cancers. About 10x as many people in Israel have died from that than from COVID. I don’t see everyone ranting about pikuach nefesh there. 800 die each year from second hand smoke. Non-smokers dying because of smokers. Yet, every time I take a walk somebody blows smoke in my face. Pikuach nefesh?

Halacha takes into account Avodas Hashem and the COVID policies issued by non-religious people, even anti-religious people, have caused incredible disruption to people’s lives with Zoom bar mitzvahs and tiny little private weddings, and forcing Charedi children onto the Internet, and improper minyanim, and reams of bittel Torah. I know children who are really getting messed up from all the fear mongering and the incredible disruption to their lives.

Is it justified? Anybody who thinks it’s so simple is showing his or her bias. There are legitimate differences of opinion here. Let us acknowledge that.