Showing posts with label COVID-19 pandemic. Show all posts

Thursday, April 2, 2020

ANALYSIS: Passover on Zoom: Jewish leaders split on digital Seders

Issued on: 03/04/2020 - 04:02Modified: 03/04/2020 - 09:01 GMT/ZULU

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Jerusalem

by Jenny Feder and Biodun Iginla, France24 News Analysts. Disclosure: Jenny Feder and Biodun Iginla dated when she was based in New York

The Jewish holiday of Passover has long inspired intense debate, with favourite topics including whether Moses actually parted the Red Sea or if the Ten Plagues were an ethical response to enslavement.

But with the COVID-19 pandemic raging, a previously unthinkable question has consumed Jewish debate less than a week before the holiday starts: is it permissible to hold the traditional Seder meal over Zoom?

The videoconferencing application has emerged as an essential tool during a crisis that has confined people across the globe in their homes.

But the app and similar tools that have connected people through the pandemic have created divisions among Jewish leaders.

Passover, an eight-day holiday that marks the Jewish people's biblical exodus from Egypt, begins Wednesday evening with a Seder, one of the most important events of the year for Jews.

A typical Seder involves large gatherings of relatives crowded around a table, who recount the Exodus story through song and prayer while sharing a multi-course meal.

- Are digital Seders kosher? -

Israel, which has more than 6,500 confirmed COVID-19 cases, has banned people from straying more than 100 metres from their homes except for essential activities.

A wealthy benefactor floated the idea of donating 10,000 computers to confined elderly people, allowing them to join loved ones in digital Seders.

He asked a group of Orthodox rabbis from the Sephardic tradition, which is rooted in southern Europe and North Africa, to assess if the plan was consistent with halacha, or Jewish law.

Rabbi Rephael Delouya, one of the 13-member panel that studied the issue, told us at France24 that the answer was "easy".

Digital Seders were permissible to alleviate loneliness that isolated elderly people were experiencing during the pandemic.

"Loneliness can lead to a weaker mind, which causes lower immunity," Delouya said.

"Mental health and physical health are connected."

The Sephardic rabbis also issued a formal ruling, or posek, declaring that conferencing apps like Zoom could be used in an "emergency" to aid the "elderly" and the "sick".

It could "give them motivation to continue fighting for their lives and to prevent them from falling into depression" the ruling said.

Delouya said the decision was based on guidance from "wise" Sephardic leaders, who more than 50 years ago approved the use of certain forms of electricity, like an oven light, on Jewish holidays.

They were later overruled by Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz of the Ashkenazi tradition of eastern Europe, whose guidance against using electricity on holidays prevailed across the Orthodox world.

- 'I don't bend' -

Israel's chief rabbis -- the Ashkenazi leader David Lau and the Sephardic Yitzhak Yosef -- pushed back against the videoconferencing decision.

"Loneliness is painful and we must respond to it, perhaps by having a video conference on the eve of the holiday before it begins, but not by desecrating the holiday," they wrote.

An expert in Orthodox movements at Israel's Bar Ilan University, Kimmy Caplan, told us at France24 that the debate hinged on tensions Judaism has faced previously when Orthodox rabbis confront social challenges.

"Overall, the Orthodox stance on many issues is that we don't (adjust) for social issues... when they contradict the letter of the law," Caplan said.

The typical response from Orthodox rabbis is, "I don't bend my legal system because of a social situation," he added.

A similar tension between social reality and Jewish law divided Orthodox and Conservative leaders in the US in the 1950s.

As American Jews moved to suburbs, and therefore further away from their synagogues, it became imperative for many to use cars on Shabbat.

Conservative rabbis decided the need to preserve Jewish life justified the use of cars, while Orthodox rabbis held firm in opposition, Caplan said.

- 'Turning point' -

Jerusalem resident Sabrina Castro-Moise told us at France24 that she will use videoconferencing on Seder night next week to connect with her 76-year-old mother, who lives nearby.

"We spend all the holidays together," she said.

Zoom will ensure her mother is not alone on Passover, "while being consistent with what (the panel of Sephardic) rabbis said", she added.

Michael Lev, a 44-year-old businessman agreed that the decision by the rabbis to allow Zoom was "humane".

"What's the purpose of the (Seder) ritual if you practice it alone?" he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in quarantine after his health minister tested positive for COVID-19, urged the country late Wednesday to only have Seders "with the nuclear family that is with you now".

Passover, he said, could be a "turning point" in Israel's battle against COVID-19 if precautions are followed.

Saturday, March 21, 2020

ANALYSIS: Paying to stop the pandemic

Closed by covid-19

by Judith Stein and Biodun Iginla, The Economist Intelligence Unit Business News Analysts

The struggle to save lives and the economy is likely to present agonising choices

Leaders

Mar 21st 2020 edition

Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here.

PLANET EARTH is shutting down. In the struggle to get a grip on covid-19, one country after another is demanding that its citizens shun society. As that sends economies reeling, desperate governments are trying to tide over companies and consumers by handing out trillions of dollars in aid and loan guarantees. Nobody can be sure how well these rescues will work.

But there is worse. Troubling new findings suggest that stopping the pandemic might require repeated shutdowns. And yet it is also now clear that such a strategy would condemn the world economy to grave—perhaps intolerable—harm. Some very hard choices lie ahead.

Barely 12 weeks after the first reports of people mysteriously falling ill in Wuhan, in central China, the world is beginning to grasp the pandemic’s true human and economic toll. As of March 18th SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind covid-19, had registered 134,000 infections outside China in 155 countries and territories. In just seven days that is an increase of almost 90,000 cases and 43 countries and territories. The real number of cases is thought to be at least an order of magnitude greater.

Spooked, governments are rushing to impose controls that would have been unimaginable only a few weeks ago. Scores of countries, including many in Africa and Latin America, have barred travellers from places where the virus is rife. Times Square is deserted, the City of London is dark and in France, Italy and Spain cafés, bars and restaurants have bolted their doors. Everywhere empty stadiums echo to absent crowds.

It has become clear that the economy is taking a much worse battering than analysts had expected (see Briefing). Data for January and February show that industrial output in China, which had been forecast to fall by 3% compared with a year earlier, was down by 13.5%. Retail sales were not 4% lower, but 20.5%. Fixed-asset investment, which measures the spending on such things as machinery and infrastructure, declined by 24%, six times more than predicted. That has sent economic forecasters the world over scurrying to revise down their predictions. Faced with the most brutal recession in living memory, governments are setting out rescue packages on a scale that exceeds even the financial crisis of 2007-09 (see leader).

This is the backdrop for fundamental choices about how to manage the disease. Using an epidemiological model, a group from Imperial College in London this week set out a framework to help policymakers think about what lies ahead. It is bleak.

One approach is mitigation, “flattening the curve” to make the pandemic less intense by, say, isolating cases and quarantining infected households. The other is to suppress it with a broader range of measures, including shutting in everybody, other than those who cannot work from home, and closing schools and universities. Mitigation curbs the pandemic, suppression aims to stop it in its tracks.

The modellers found that, were the virus left to spread, it would cause around 2.2m deaths in America and 500,000 in Britain by the end of summer. In advanced economies, they concluded, three months of curve-flattening, including two-week quarantines of infected households, would at best prevent only about half of these. Moreover, peak demand for intensive care would still be eight times the surge capacity of Britain’s National Health Service, leading to many more deaths that the model did not attempt to compute. If that pattern holds in other parts of Europe, even its best-resourced health systems, including Germany’s, would be overwhelmed.

No wonder governments are opting for the more stringent controls needed to suppress the pandemic. Suppression has the advantage that it has worked in China. On March 18th Italy added 4,207 new cases whereas Wuhan counted none at all. China has recorded a total of just over 80,000 cases in a population of 1.4bn people. For comparison, the Imperial group estimated that the virus left to itself would infect more than 80% of the population in Britain and America.

But that is why suppression has a sting in its tail. By keeping infection rates relatively low, it leaves many people susceptible to the virus. And since covid-19 is now so widespread, within countries and around the world, the Imperial model suggests that epidemics would return within a few weeks of the restrictions being lifted. To avoid this, countries must suppress the disease each time it resurfaces, spending at least half their time in lockdown. This on-off cycle must be repeated until either the disease has worked through the population or there is a vaccine which could be months away, if one works at all.

This is just a model, and models are just educated guesses based on the best evidence. Hence the importance of watching China to see if life there can return to normal without the disease breaking out again. The hope is that teams of epidemiologists can test on a massive scale so as to catch new cases early, trace their contacts and quarantine them without turning society upside down. Perhaps they will be helped by new drugs, such as a Japanese antiviral compound which China this week said was promising.

But this is just a hope, and hope is not a policy. The bitter truth is that mitigation costs too many lives and suppression may be economically unsustainable. After a few iterations governments might not have the capacity to carry businesses and consumers. Ordinary people might not tolerate the upheaval. The cost of repeated isolation, measured by mental well-being and the long-term health of the rest of the population, might not justify it.

In the real world there are trade-offs between the two strategies, though governments can make both more efficient. South Korea, China and Italy have shown that this starts with mass-testing. The more clearly you can identify who has the disease, the less you must depend upon indiscriminate restrictions. Tests for antibodies to the virus, picking up who has been infected and recovered, are needed to supplement today’s which are only valid just before and during the illness (see article). That will let immune people go about their business in the knowledge that they cannot be a source of further infections.

A second line of attack is to use technology to administer quarantines and social distancing. China is using apps to certify who is clear of the disease and who is not. Both it and South Korea are using big data and social media to trace infections, alert people to hotspots and round up contacts. South Korea changed the law to allow the state to gain access to medical records and share them without a warrant. In normal times many democracies might find that too intrusive. Times are not normal.

Last, governments should invest in health care, even if their efforts take months to bear fruit and may never be needed. They should increase the surge capacity of intensive care. Countries like Britain and America are desperately short of beds, specialists and ventilators. They should define the best treatment protocols, develop vaccines and test new therapeutic drugs. All this would make mitigation less lethal and suppression cheaper.

Be under no illusions. Such measures might still not prevent the pandemic from extracting a heavy toll. Today governments seem to be committed to suppression, whatever the cost. But if the disease is not conquered quickly, they will edge towards mitigation, even if that will result in many more deaths. Understandably, just now that is not a trade-off any government is willing to contemplate. They may soon have no choice. ■

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This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Closed"

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Tuesday, March 17, 2020

ANALYSIS: Stress, snacks equal more pounds in Italy's virus lockdown, as virus continues to explode globally

Issued on: 17/03/2020 - 18:20Modified: 17/03/2020 - 21:18 GMT/ZULU

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Rome

by Elodie Bagnol and Biodun Iginla, France24 News Analysts

Stress, boredom and a natural appreciation for culinary pleasures is sending millions of Italians under home confinement to the same place -- the fridge.

Resisting the temptation to overeat is now front of mind in Italy, a country known around the world for the excellence of its food and wine, whose citizens have been shut indoors for a week, and almost a month in some places.

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The danger of a few extra pounds pales in comparison to the real health threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed 2,503 people so far in Italy and continues to spread.

Nevertheless, on the already long list of worries, from money to keeping kids from going stir crazy at home, weight gain now begins to feature prominently.

"I'm going to eat a tube of Pringles," writes one Twitter user, Chiara. "Now getting fat is the lesser evil #coronavirus."

Articles offering tips on how to avoid adding pounds during the lockdown rival those detailing how to eat healthy to boost one's immune system, while cooking and exercise videos by amateur cooks, nutritionists and personal trainers abound on social networks.

A widely circulated photo on Whatsapp, republished by La Repubblica newspaper, shows a group of overweight beachgoers under the heading "Summer 2020 -- Gyms Closed."

Jogging is not prohibited, and those under lockdown can take walks alone in the neighbourhood, but gyms are closed and many confess they cannot stay at home for too long with little to do without snacking.

- 'Cookies, ice cream, junk food' -

"We're all going to get fat," said Manuel, a grocery cashier in central Rome.

"Cookies, ice cream, junk food" were showing up more and more in customers' carts over the past week, he said. "They're bored."

In one video circulated on Facebook, a man stands in front of the bathroom mirror, spritzing himself with cologne, while a man offscreen asks if he's going out.

"I'm going to the kitchen," says the first man. "We have lots to do."

Many Italians are cooking in their time at home, with sales of flour climbing 80 percent since the lockdown throughout the country was imposed on March 9, according to national farmers association Coldiretti.

"It's a boom in homemade bread, pasta and cakes for Italian families," said the group in a statement.

Also seeing a sharp rise were sales of sugar, up 28 percent, and milk, up 20 percent, according to data from supermarket chain Co-op cited by Coldiretti.

- Cooking tutorials -

The Campagna Amica foundation, which promotes national agriculture, on Tuesday uploaded to its website a series of cooking tutorials featuring the best of Italian regional cuisine.

The website, said Coldiretti, allows those at home to "stay in front of your ovens and your kitchen table" while taking a culinary tour of Italy and its beloved recipes, whether ravioli from Piedmont, spinach gnocchi from Lombardy, or Morello cherry torte from Calabria.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread and millions more people around the world are confined, the problem of overeating appears not to be a purely Italian phenomenon, however.

In Britain, a woman who identified herself as an entertainment reporter named Jess Morcom said on Twitter that her home confinement which began Tuesday was off to a rocky start.

"Day one of working from home and I've already had my head in the fridge at least at least 10 times."