RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/coronavirus_and_elderly_death_rates.html

Amid this week’s dire predictions of a Chinese Flu bloodbath, Julie Kelly at American Greatness details her skepticism about the accuracy of reported deaths to date:  “[T]here is little information available as to what qualifies as a coronavirus fatality for official counts. And there is good reason to approach such tallies with skepticism since reporting from states like New York is suspiciously vague.”  She explains that deaths in patients with co-morbidities “are always attributed to coronavirus as the main cause of death instead of just noting it as a contributing factor.”

My father had a catastrophic fall when he was 86, as well as a cornucopia of additional medical conditions including dementia.  The fall most certainly precipitated his decline, but was it the fall or his body’s inability to deal with the fall that caused it to shut down?  Would he have died at that time but for the fall?  Did it simply hasten his inevitable demise from something else going amiss in his body?  Do people with an interest in dementia research throw his death into the tally of “elders dying from dementia” even though it is more likely the dementia did not cause his death and was probably only a contributing factor?    

That said, and in deference to doctors and medical examiners, the cause of death is not always crystal clear.  Moreover, except in limited cases, Jews generally do not perform autopsies and, frankly, I don’t believe autopsies are generally performed unless there is a reason for it or the family demands it. Thus,  how many autopsies are actually being performed on suspected COVID-19 victims that confirm it as the cause of death, let alone tests that confirm the infection?  Determining a cause of death with absolute certitude is not always the no-brainer we have come to expect from television shows, and could be further muddled by an absence of autopsies and inconsistencies in administering tests.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-hydroxychloroquine-patients-should-be-able-to-try-any-potential-cure/

We still have a lot to learn about hydroxychloroquine, but we know that restrictions on personal liberty are unwise.

There’s a raging debate over the use of hydroxychloroquine to fight the novel coronavirus. Amid the controversy, it may seem like there is absolutely nothing we can agree on.

To be fair, the fact that there has been debate on this issue isn’t surprising, nor is it unhealthy. Although the Food and Drug Administration has granted an emergency-use authorization for hydroxychloroquine (and I believe rightly so; more on that later) as a coronavirus treatment, we still know quite little about its efficacy for this usage.

What is unhealthy, though, is the kind of debate we’ve been having. As my colleague Jim Geraghty pointed out on Monday, most of the conversation about the drug has been two politically motivated sides shouting at each other, framing their arguments as if any of this is a clear-cut, black-and-white issue. President Trump and his supporters tout it as a sort of medical marvel, while his detractors cry that it’s dangerous quackery. This, Geraghty explains, is the wrong approach — there are “many factors” at play when it comes to determining how a drug will or will not work. The results will vary from person to person; “nuance” is necessary. Partisan politics already play an outsized role in our conversation. When it comes to matters of life versus death, it is especially disgusting.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/the-lefts-ugly-reaction-to-hydroxychloroquine/

The idea that he is promoting the drug to boost the price of a mutual fund in which he owns shares is perhaps the most ludicrous conspiracy theory yet.

A  widely shared, four-person-bylined, “wow”-provoking New York Times story today informs us that Donald Trump is personally benefiting from his “aggressive advocacy” of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine because he owns stock in one of the companies that manufacture the drug.

The story might be one of the most ridiculous articles published by mainstream media in the Trump era — though, admittedly, the field is highly competitive. But while knee-jerk anti-Trumpism is expected, the angry obsession over the president’s championing of hydroxychloroquine is uniquely ugly.

For one thing, and I realize this might be difficult for some people to comprehend, it’s plausible, even likely, that Trump advocates for chloroquine because he is legitimately optimistic that a therapeutic answer might help Americans. Even if you feel he’s being reckless when speaking about the drug, you can accept that his intentions are good.

It’s also possible that Trump is hopeful about hydroxychloroquine because he thinks it will help his reelection. Desiring an outcome that benefits the vast majority of Americans, but also benefits you, is a perfectly sound moral position. Hoping for negative outcomes to strengthen your partisan position, on the other hand, is pretty nefarious.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/rabbi-yaakov-perlow/91084/

The death today of the Novominsker rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, will lend a sad note to the Passover seders of tens of thousands families the world over. The rabbi, a towering figure in the world of Torah Judaism, was carried off from his home in Brooklyn by the coronavirus. He perished at 89, two weeks after issuing an important warning to Jews that religious law required them to heed medical doctors during the pandemic.

We did not know Rabbi Perlow personally, though we’d once met him briefly at the offices of the Agudath Israel of America. We admired him enormously for setting a standard to which fervently orthodox Jews could repair. The Aguda is the largest grassroots organization of fervently religious Jews. Rabbi Perlow had been its president since 1998 and also chaired its Council of Torah Sages.

The Novominsker dynasty that Perlow headed was founded in Poland by his grandfather and later headed by his father, whom Perlow succeeded. In 2015, at the Aguda’s annual banquet at the Hilton in New York, Rabbi Perlow surprised attendees by suddenly declaring he felt “compelled to address the president of this great country,” meaning President Obama. Yeshiva World reported that a “deafening silence” came over the hall.