It is more than wise to do this for 2 reasons. One is to protect yourself and the other is to protect others. In my view these two mitigation efforts are baseline. Whatever one can do to increase those efforts should be done whenever possible.
This is how I conduct myself. When I go to Shul for instance I will always sit in the seat furthest away from people I can find. And not ‘settle’ for the 6 feet bare minimum. And if I find (as I recently have) that others are not adhering properly to those guidelines, I stop going altogether.
For me the calculus is very simple. I do not want to die. I do not want to go to a hospital ICU. I do not want to put on a ventilator. And I don’t even want to get a little bit sick. So far - and with God’s help - my (some would say extreme) caution has paid off. Until I get vaccinated, I plan to continue along these lines.
I still can’t understand why everybody doesn’t feel this way. But the fact is that a lot of people don’t. Which is why hospitals all over the country are running out of ICU beds; why the numbers of people getting infected every week is exponential; And why COVID is now the leading cause of death in the country. Ahead of heart disease and cancer!
To me this is a no brainer. (For those who don’t agree I sometimes feel like they are no brainers. But I digress.)
That being said, here is the ‘contradiction’ I referred to. I fully agree with Rabbi Avi Shafran’s take on a recent Supreme Court decision. They ruled unconstitutional Governor Cuomo’s ban on having more then 10 people attending a house of worship in certain neighborhoods for reasons of reducing the spread of COVID.
If I am such a zealot about protective measures, how could I possibly side with a decision that does the opposite of that? That answer to that question is quite simple. In my view all buildings where people might gather for any reason ought to be shut. Unless it is essential to their lives. In those cases they should be treated equally with respect to whatever mitigations efforts health experts require. The question is, what is considered essential?
That churches, Shuls and mosques are not considered as essential as liqueur stores and bicycle shops makes this an issue of governmental interference on religious rights. The rules ought to be the same for all. That they weren’t is why the Supreme Court ruled the governor’s edict unconstitutional - based on first amendment grounds. So as Rabbi Shafran said, the Supreme Court was only doing its job when it voted in a 5-4 decision in favor of the Catholic Church and Agudah - who were the parties petitioning the court.
It is notable that the decision was not unanimous. 3 of the dissenters were the liberal Justices on the court. I believe it was because they felt that the government has an overriding duty to protect the public and if an institution is determined to be a hotspot, they have the right to be stricter with them than they are with other institutions that are not.
It’s true that restrictions based on the public good can sometimes override a religious right. At the same time though, those restrictions have to be fair and based on sound medical science. So that when a Shul that can hold hundreds of people is limited to only ten, that is discriminatory. The mitigation rules can be easily accommodated to the point of doubling or even tripling the distance between fellow worshippers who should all be wearing masks.
The governor must have finally realized his overreaction and rescinded those requirements even before the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional. Which is why Chief Justice Roberts dissented. But he actually agreed with the majority in principle.
This decision by the Supreme Court is a harbinger for future decisions. It clearly shows that religious rights will no longer be a seen as a stepchild to other rights. And why it was important to religious people to have high quality conservative justices on the bench. Those of us that lean politically conservative as I do ought to be grateful to the outgoing President for putting 3 justices like that on the bench. Even if you don’t like him.
