Posted on      by     

FLASHBACK: In early 2019, NYC put unvaccinated Orthodox Jews on lockdown amid trumped up ā€œmeasles outbreakā€

Posted on      by     

Does anyone remember that this happenedĀ back in 2019? In hindsight, this feels like the dry run of what became the COVID ā€œpandemicā€:

ā€œThe visitors arrived from Israel in October at the end of Sukkot, a Jewish holiday during which religious congregations gather for meals, prayer, and dance. They brought with them, inadvertently, a case of measles. One exploded into dozens, and over the past six months, health workers have tracked 156 individuals who contracted the disease ā€” the ā€œvast majority,ā€ officials say, impacting the tight-knit community of at least 50,000 Orthodox Jews here.

Facing an outbreak that is now among the largest in the country ā€” and the focus of newfound concerns about a national resurgence of the measles ā€” the Rockland County executive this week took a step seemingly without precedent in the United States. Beginning Wednesday, all unvaccinated children were banned from enclosed public spaces, including schools and synagogues, as part of a 30-day state of emergency. Parents found to have violated the directive could be charged with a misdemeanor and face fines or jail time.ā€

The ever-present religious instinct

Posted on      by     

The world has become too explainable, too compartmentalized, too normalized. Mystery and wonder are scrubbed from every corner, sanitized, and explained. And yet our minds are desperate for wonder and mystery. Our evolutionary hardware remains mired in a prehistoric past, built for a time when our only explanations for the world around us were supernatural, filled with mystery. We chafe against the unnatural glow ofĀ explanation, and seek subconsciously to return to this world of mystery. This, I think,Ā explainsĀ the reason for the random upsurge in cult activity, as well as our recent brush with COVID Armageddon, a purely psychological phenomenon, the product of millions of imaginations rushing in to accept and assist with a new Dark Age. Not only is there too little mystery left for us to consume, our scientific advances have uncovered the unsettling strangeness of what appears to be our total isolation in the known universe. Over a century ago, on the cusp of so many scientific revolutions, was there a sense of hope that new wonders would soon be uncovered by the scientific community? There must have been. The promise of discovery ignites the imagination, in hopes, not of some new answer, but the uncovering of another, deeper mystery. Our greatest fear may be that the puzzle has been solved without the catharsis of revelation. We are the animal that strives for meaning, but in our quest for meaning we drastically reduce the odds that we will achieve it.