UPDATE ON CORONAVIRUS AND VACCINE NEWS

 24 Kislev 5781

Erev Hanukkah

We are still waiting for a final word from the regime about their final plan to spoil the holiday.  Ynet is reporting...

The government was to hold a special session at 8:30am Thursday to discuss limiting movement during the eight-day Hanukkah holiday in order to stem the spread of the coronavirus and was expected to announce nighttime closures in predominantly Jewish communities.  

...A senior minister of unnamed political affiliation said: "There is very twisted logic in this proposal. A nighttime curfew for Jews when the infection rate is highest among the Arab community. [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu must explain this strange proposal."

Still waiting (as of 9:44 am) to see what will be.  Meantime...

Coronavirus vaccine refusers: Anti-vaxxers or simply cautious?

The first Pfizer vaccines have landed in Israel and already the prime minister and health minister have volunteered to be the first to be inoculated.

There is a group of medical professionals, however, who are urging the country and the public to slow down.

“There is still no confirmation from a body other than the drug’s manufacturers that the so-called vaccine is free of side effects, safe for all, old and young,” wrote Prof. Yoel Donchin, a retired Hadassah-University Medical Center doctor, in an article published Wednesday on the popular professional website Doctors Only.

He said he believes that because the country – and the world – is looking for a vaccine to be the “light at the end of the tunnel,” some professionals are overlooking what might be obvious questions about the long-term effects of a vaccine that was developed in record time and is based on new technology.

Senior doctors who would not even accept a sandwich from a drug agent for fear it would bias their evaluation of the clinical data being presented to them are this time he said “accepting without hesitation, and even happily, the revolutionary idea that injecting a new protein that enters directly into the cells will cause the nasty coronavirus to commit suicide, since this is the solution that the human race has been waiting for. “Do they not imagine the possibility, even if it is remote, that there might be penetration into the reproductive cells as well? Maybe the vaccine will affect the brain after a year?” Donchin asked.