Thursday, April 2, 2020

The Coronavirus Pandemic (Part 6) - by Moses


      So now it's April 2nd, 2020 and we see the worldwide number of Coronavirus cases at almost 1 million with roughly 50,000 deaths.  A staggering ill assessment by Donald Trump from what he was calling a strong flu in January right through to early March.  This is like out of the movie 'Outbreak' with practically no end in sight.  All we can really do at this point is to isolate as effectively as we possibly can, and with respect to keeping our sanity there is social media to keep us well informed.  Which brings me back to the first three parts that I wrote about this pandemic, that it could be G-d's wrath (a plague like that of the bubonic plague - capable of killing 100-200 million people worldwide over a 14 year period)  .  

  Spreading like it does begs the question;  Are we going to see off-breeds of the original strand of the known Coronavirus manifest as a threat to infect people in greater severity as to what we're seeing now (ie. a strand of the virus that has a 30% kill rate of the infected)?  If this is only the beginning then the population in North America could be devastated.  Already throwing out numbers like a possible 1 million deaths in America from this disease are probably in fact too conservative.  What we'll eventually have to accept is that our way of life in the Western World may have to change to accommodate safe practices in almost every way we go about our business.  How crazy do germaphobes look to be now; the Howard Hughes of this World, and any other influential paranoid as they were so deemed as recently as 3 months ago.  Our perspectives will surely change as this virus grows, as to what other measures we can take to ensure our health and safety on this matter.

  All I can think of are the Health Care Workers; the Doctors, Nurses, Orderlies, First Response Teams and other Hospital Staff risking their lives to save ours.  When we think of why it's important to have Doctors (and other Hospital Staff) we are now aware as to why.  If this is a test from Hashem (the Creator of the Universe) himself then we're royally screwed.  How many people in the world operate with morality?  The inference is obvious, like in the time of Noah there are very few people that are righteous in a spiritual sense.  How many unspoken sins?  How many hypocrites populate the mainstream population?  Too many to count.  Not to be negative but when I think how common place it is in North America to see someone with a tattoo, or to see someone who takes a kickback in their daily functions as a rule of thumb.  Isn't it accepted that 1000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean is a good start?

  Let's try and live through these times as homo-sapiens with purpose and vigor (determination), not let our minds take us to a shallow existence.  Will we survive this scare as a people?

  As a Jewish man I recount the Passover every year during Seders.  At home now with no family gathering I'm wondering how Rabbi's see the poetic injustice of recounting the story of the Passover in which each Rabbi's take (Rabbi Eliezar, Rabbi Tarfon, Rabbi Jose, and Rabbi Akiba) on how severe the 10 Plagues that befell Egypt could really have been in those times?  Each Rabbi had his own take as to the severity of how many plagues the G-d most high was capable of delivering.  How do Rabbi's under different names today make similar analogies in the modern day with respect to the Coronavirus, while keeping in perspective our Exodus from Egypt and the plagues of that time (all at the same time)?
   

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How many Rabi's does it take to change a lightbulb?

one to think about all the Health Care Workers
one to wonder if this is a test from Hashem
one to get a tattoo
one to take a kickback daily
and one thousand to make aluminum foil chains strong enough
to tie to 1,000 lawyers ankles, to dump them to the bottom of the ocean.