RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/04/african-american-dem-rep-wcoronavirus-credits-daniel-greenfield/

In the tribal age, even medication can become a partisan issue. That’s been the fate of hydroxychloroquine, alternately praised or touted, depending which party you’re in. In the middle of a pandemic, you would think that a drug which showed some potential would be welcomed by everyone. Instead, we have oddball posturing by the media and Democrats that there’s something wrong with this particular experimental treatment, as opposed to the other experimental treatments, because President Trump was touting it.

On the other hand, there’s this story.

A Democratic state representative from Detroit is crediting hydroxychloroquine — and Republican President Donald Trump who touted the drug — for saving her in her battle with the coronavirus.

State Rep. Karen Whitsett, who learned Monday she has tested positive for COVID-19, said she started taking hydroxychloroquine on March 31, prescribed by her doctor, after both she and her husband sought treatment for a range of symptoms on March 18.

“It was less than two hours” before she started to feel relief, said Whitsett, who had experienced shortness of breath, swollen lymph nodes, and what felt like a sinus infection. She is still experiencing headaches, she said.

Whitsett said she was familiar with “the wonders” of hydroxychloroquine from an earlier bout with Lyme disease, but does not believe she would have thought to ask for it, or her doctor would have prescribed it, had Trump not been touting it as a possible treatment for COVID-19.

“It has a lot to do with the president … bringing it up,” Whitsett said. “He is the only person who has the power to make it a priority.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/07/optimism-is-dawning-in-new-york-city/

There is a strange thing about New York City that anyone who has ever lived here has experienced, but which is hard to quantify and explain. Oft times the city has a mood. That is to say that from your door, on the subway, around the streets, bars, and restaurants, for an entire day New York can take on a collective attitude. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s annoyed, but over the past day or so, it is beginning to feel optimistic.

Monday night it was announced that the number of cases and deaths from the novel coronavirus had slowed. While both Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have expressed caution, it is mixed with hope. As expected, the curve of cases in Gotham is flattening and maybe, just maybe, the worst will soon be behind us. For the first time in weeks, a future seems to be opening up.

I could feel it in the street yesterday. To be sure, it was a small cross sample. I haven’t left my little Brooklyn neighborhood in more than a month, but on my regular constitutional to the bodega to buy tobacco, and the grocery store to purchase my less pressing needs, something was in the air. In fairness, it was a nice day, the first in some time: low 60’s, sunlight speckling the sidewalks through clouds. But it was more than that — a spring in the step, the faint return of a twinkle in the eye.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/coronavirus-deaths-will-be-much-much-much-lower-than-predicted-models-says-head-of-cdc/

In the ever-changing contradictory nature of information during the pandemic age, the head of the CDC, Robert Redfield, told listeners of Arizona’s 1030 KVOI radio he believes there’s good news ahead. Redfield said the death toll from the Chinese COVID-19 will be “much, much, much lower” than the models have predicted. “If we just social distance, we will see this virus and this outbreak basically decline, decline, decline. And I think that’s what you’re seeing,” he said.

The models the White House is using projected the deaths of between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans. Redfield says models aren’t the end of the story. “Models are only as good as their assumptions, obviously there are a lot of unknowns about the virus,” he said. “A model should never be used to assume that we have a number.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/as-new-york-posts-highest-one-day-death-toll-cuomo-says-no-victim-died-because-we-couldnt-provide-care/

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that no victim of the coronavirus has died because the state could not provide health care for them, even as New York posted its highest number of deaths in one day.

“You can’t save everyone. This virus is very good at what it does, and it kills vulnerable people,” Cuomo said at his daily briefing providing updates on the outbreak. “The question is, are you saving everyone you can save? And there the answer is yes, and I take some solace in that fact.”

“Our health care system is operating. I don’t believe we’ve lost a single person because we couldn’t provide care,” the Democratic governor continued. “People we lost we couldn’t save despite our best efforts.”

A record 731 New Yorkers died between Monday and Tuesday, Cuomo reported. He cautioned that the death rate is a “lagging indicator,” meaning that those who died are often sick for weeks before they pass. More than 138,000 people in the state have been infected with the respiratory illness, with 8,157 new positive cases on Tuesday, the lowest rate in a week. The number of patients being hospitalized and moved to intensive care has dropped as well.

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