Will It Get Worse Before It Gets Better? It's Up to Us!

Where not wearing a mask can get you

The world is on fire. At least that is what it seems like. Sickness and death are all around us. People are getting sick in record numbers. Chicago is currently under a ‘stay home advisory’. For the next 30 days - the entire city is being asked to stay at home as much as possible leaving only to go to work or school or to buy essential needs like food or medicine. There are new restrictions on meetings and social events, limiting them to 10 people whether indoors or outdoors. This includes weddings, birthday parties and funerals.  

The US recorded over a million new cases of COVID just last week! 1.3 million people have already died worldwide from this disease! Almost a quarter of a million of them in the US! 

Illinois has gone from an under 3% positivity rate to an over 12% positivity rate in just a couple of months. 

I never thought we would get to this point. But here we are. If these numbers don’t go down our governor has promised to impose a mandatory lockdown. And yet so many people are still questioning the need to wear masks and social distance. I literally do not understand this mentality. Sure it’s inconvenient. But so is dying. This is not a political thing. It is not conservative of liberal to wear a mask. It is just plain common sense. When the best health experts in the world are all saying the same thing – that if everyone would wear a mask it would help prevent infections and significantly reduce positivity rates, it can only be a fool that will doubt it. 

I guess there are a lot of fools out there.

People that I used to admire for their idealism have lost some of my respect because of that attitude. Need I remind anyone how many in our own community have gotten sick? Some dying? …and some surviving with permanent damage to their health? Do they not notice it? Or is it that they just don’t care - or care enough. I hate to say it, but it isn't just people in the secular world that seem to feel this way. A lot of religious Jews apparently feel that way too, judging by the numbers I see without masks in public. I guess they don’t care who or how many the virus has killed as long as they don’t have to wear a mask.  

This is all very depressing. But as I have recently noted there is light at the end of the tunnel. More light today than yesterday. Not only has Pfizer gotten excellent results boasting a 90% effective rate from the clinical trials for the vaccines they developed, Moderna has just reported an astonishing 94.5% effective rate from the clinical trials of their vaccine! In both cases with no serious side effects. Moderna has the added benefit of not needing 100 degree below zero freezing of their vaccine during transportation and storage. 

This is good news for all. The Trump administration has already purchased many millions of doses and is ready to distribute it as quickly as humanly possible all over the country. (I just hope the President doesn't drop the ball by continuing to deny his successor access to his distribution plans so that the quick distribution of vaccines will not be interrupted.  

Both Pfizer and Moderna are requesting FDA approval for emergency use. And they will get it. Vaccinations can begin right away. The current estimates are that by April most of us will be able to get vaccinated. Once we are above 50% we can begin to talk about herd immunity. 

Unfortunately the catch here is whether enough people will be willing to get the vaccine. The media has done a good job sowing doubt on the vaccine's safety and efficacy – blaming it on the President. What they should have been doing is ignoring the President and hammering away at what the health experts are telling us. That the CDC, NIH, FDA will not approve of a vaccine that is not both safe and effective. As Dr. Anthony Fauci, our most trusted health expert has said - if these vaccines get their approval, he will be the first to get vaccinated. I feel the same way. In fact I can’t wait to get it. 

In the meantime things will very likely get a lot worse before they get better. Hard to imagine more than the million cases of COVID over week we now now experiencing. But I cannot help but to see that coming. I don’t want to see a lockdown but I can see that coming, too. Which will not serve any of us well. Especially for the vast majority of us that need to work for a living. If the fools that don’t like masks keep treating them as an unnecessary burden, they might not like the burden coming their way if they don’t shape up. 

Just because there is light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t mean we are out of that tunnel yet. We are not. If only the fools treating the pandemic lightly would realize that. 

On a personal note, I want to share that this morning I was able to watch a live-stream of my grandson’s wedding in Israel. He is the first of my grandchildren to get married. It was a very small outdoor wedding but quite a thrill to watch on my big screen. Today’s technology is so advanced that the images were amazingly clear and detailed. It was almost like being there.

But almost is not where I would have liked to be. Were it not for the pandemic, my wife and I would not have missed it for the world. Be that as it may, this event shed a little ray of sunshine and joy into our lives during an otherwise very depressing time.