What if the Cure is Worse than the Disease? (15th May 2020)
May 15, 2020 22:52:20 GMT
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Post by Rabbi Neil on May 15, 2020 22:52:20 GMT
Recently, I’ve started to hear and read more people ask the question, “What if the cure is worse than the disease?” I’ll come to the response to that regarding this current virus later, but in order to address that, we need to first look at a couple of pages of Talmud in Tractate Gittin (67b, 68b-69b). There, we read of a number of extraordinary cures to differing ailments. For example, for temporary insanity the afflicted person should eat red meat roasted over hot coals and drink strongly diluted wine. The cure for a day-old fever is drinking a jug of water, for a two-day old fever it is bloodletting, for a three-day old fever it is roasted red meat and strongly diluted wine, and for an old fever, it is to bring a black hen, tear it in quarters, shave the middle of the afflicted person’s head, and place the portions of hen on his bald head until it sticks to his head. Then the person has to stand up to his neck in water until he feels faint, then he submerges himself, emerges, and rests. But if he can’t do that, the cure is to eat leeks, go into the water up to his neck, submerge, emerge and rest. The cure for chills is to eat fatty meat roasted over hot coals and drinking undiluted wine. The cure for cold is to work on a millstone or to lift beams. The cure for a headache caused by excessive blood to the head is to boil cypress, willow, myrtle, olive, poplar, sea willow and cynodont grass together, to pour three hundred cups of the liquid on one side of his head, and then to repeat on the other side. But if that’s not effective – and between us, I’m very confident that it isn’t going to be – then the afflicted person should be a white rose that grew by itself, boil it, and then pour sixty cups on one side of his head and then sixty on the other. The cure for a migraine is to bring a wild rooster and slaughter it using a silver dinar coin so that the blood flows over the side of the head of the person with the migraine, although, Talmud notes, he should be careful not to get blood in his eye which might cause blindness. Then he should hang the rooster on the doorpost of his house so that when the person enters and exits their home, they rub their head against it. It keeps going. The cure for day blindness is to bring seven animal spleens, toast them on a pottery shard belonging to a bloodletter, have the afflicted person sit inside the house while another sits outside and have them say particular words to each other. The cure for a nosebleed is to bring a man named Levi who is also a priest and have that man write his own name backwards. But if he can’t get such a person, he should bring an ordinary person and they should do the same. And if the ordinary person cannot do that, he should write something else. And if he can’t do that, and this is perhaps the most extraordinary one of all…. He should bring the root of fodder, rope from an old bed, paper, saffron, the red part of a palm branch, burn them together, bring a fleece of wool that is spun into two strings, soak them in vinegar, roll them in the ash and then place them in his nostrils. And if the patient cannot do that, they should look at a stream of water flowing east to west, spread his legs over the stream, take clay from the banks of the stream into his hands, spin two strings of wool, soak them in the clay and then…? That’s right, place them in his nostrils. And if the patient can’t do that, they should stand under a gutter, let water pour on him and say some particular words. It keeps going – I even once wrote a story based around the cure for night-blindness on these pages of Talmud. But you get the point, I’m sure. These cures for these differing diseases range from nonsensical to downright abhorrent. Indeed, the story I wrote about the cure for night-blindness, called Itzchik the Physician, was specifically a critique of the abhorrence of the corresponding cure which included poking out the eye of a dog. If nothing else, these pages of Talmud reinforce for me the notion that the Oral Law that was written down in Mishnah and Talmud was a total human construction to try to make sense of what came before, and as a human construction, it is sometimes flawed – at this point, very deeply. Here, without question, time and again, the cure is worse than the disease.
And that brings us to today. So far, 87,000 people have died of this virus in this country alone, 304,000 across the world. Both of those numbers are going to continue to increase over the coming months. The preventative measures that are recommended by science such as social distancing and minimal economic activity, are proving to be too difficult for many people in this country. The question that I now hear being asked more and more, then, is… is the cure worse than the disease? On an individual level, for many people it really is. For example, some domestic abuse hotlines have seen a dramatic increase in the number of calls while others have seen a dramatic decrease. The dramatic decrease is not due to the number of incidents of domestic abuse decreasing but because the people who would normally report such incidents have far less time by themselves to report it. For such people, isolation with an abuser is far, far worse than the likely inconvenience caused by the temporary sickness from this pandemic virus. Added to that, tens of millions of people in this country have now lost their jobs. They struggle to put food on the table, to support their families, to keep their homes. Given a choice, most of those people would surely rather be sick for a number of weeks than face such financial ruin. For such people, the cure is worse than the disease. For an entirely different and extremely vocal section of the American populace, though, the issue is that their freedom to do what they want when they want has been restricted and these are the people who usually complain that the cure is worse than the disease. In particular, apparently hair cuts and manicures are essential businesses to such people and they complain of their trauma of not being able to have their hair and nails done.
So, is the cure worse than the disease? The answer to that depends on another question – worse for whom? For many people it is and for many people it isn’t, even if they think that it is. For people who are extremely unlikely to die from this virus but who are likely to die from abuse or from self-harm when isolated and depressed, the cure might be worse than the disease. The problem is, of course, that no-one knows who will get just get sick and who will actually die from the virus, so really such an assessment is only based on guesswork. But for people at high risk, such as the immuno-suppressed and people over-65, then no, the cure isn’t worse than the disease, because the disease might well mean death for such people, and there really isn’t anything worse than death for an individual. So, when some people say that the cure is worse than the disease, what they’re really saying is that they don’t consider the people who have died or who are likely to die in their judgement. 3000 people died on 9/11 and it traumatized this country and changed the geopolitical structure of human society forever. Currently, the same number of people die in this country from this virus every single day, but apparently those who think the cure is worse than the disease aren’t troubled by those deaths at all. Last month, it was calculated that one American citizen dies every 45 seconds from this virus. That’s how enormous this virus is in this country. And yet, there are still people who say that the cure is worse than the virus. The only way they can say that is by saying that people staying at home and businesses closing and even people losing their jobs is something worse than one person dying every 45 seconds.
Even if after truly acknowledging that sobering statistic someone genuinely thought that the cure was worse than the disease, the response is not to abandon the cure but to change it. That’s why I mentioned all the Talmudic cures at the beginning of this sermon. No-one does that any more. It became clear that those cures didn’t work, so the Jewish community stopped using them. If the cure isn’t effective, don’t just condemn the afflicted person to suffering - get a better cure. If a medically-informed response to a pandemic creates economic hardship so serious that the economic impacts are deadlier than the virus, the appropriate response is not to abandon a cure and just leave the weak and vulnerable to die – the appropriate response must be to change your economic system. You cannot prevent people dying from poverty by condemning others to die from a preventable illness. That is deeply, deeply immoral. You prevent people dying from poverty by changing what brought them into poverty in the first place, as well as what locks them into poverty once they are there. In other words, for anyone who thinks that the cure is worse than the disease, the responsibility is on them to find a better cure, not to give up and just let the old and weak die. Deuteronomy 25:17-18 describes people who encourage the old and the weak to die. There, we read, “Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt – when you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and attacked all who were lagging behind.” That was Amalek, the sworn enemy of Israel, the exact opposite of anything Divine. Anyone who wants to open up this country to business while condemning the less physically able in this society to likely death is no better than Amalek. If the cure isn’t working, if the cure causes more harm than good – like the Talmudic cures I mentioned - then change the cure, don’t just give up on a cure and let the vulnerable suffer.
There are not two sides to this. It is not a case of shut down the country vs open up the country. The only moral thing we can do right now, based on every single piece of medical evidence, is to continue to shut down the country or risk even more mass death. That is the cure. To say otherwise is to live the ethics of Amalek. The actual question is whether or not that is the best cure? Let’s go back to those cures that I mentioned from Talmud. What’s extraordinary about them is how flexible they are. If this version of the cure isn’t possible, try that version. If that version of the cure isn’t possible, try another version. And is that isn’t possible, try yet another version. Don’t give up on the cure, change the cure, make the cure better. The only cure right now is to keep this country shut down. Now we have to make that cure better so that we can protect people whom that cure negatively effects. It’s not a perfect cure, it still does some harm, so we need to make that cure better.
Is the cure worse than the disease? No, of course it isn’t. Is the cure in its current form perfect? No, of course it isn’t. At Temple Beth Shalom, we work to make sure that this cure is the most humane cure possible. We reach out to those in need and protect those in need of support. But we will not commit the vulnerable to death just because the less vulnerable have been inconvenienced. This virus, if nothing else, has held up a mirror to American society and once again revealed its failings, particularly its economic failings. We have to work for a better cute, for a better, more equitable society. Let us use this time to think about how we might bring that society into existence, and let us say, Amen.
And that brings us to today. So far, 87,000 people have died of this virus in this country alone, 304,000 across the world. Both of those numbers are going to continue to increase over the coming months. The preventative measures that are recommended by science such as social distancing and minimal economic activity, are proving to be too difficult for many people in this country. The question that I now hear being asked more and more, then, is… is the cure worse than the disease? On an individual level, for many people it really is. For example, some domestic abuse hotlines have seen a dramatic increase in the number of calls while others have seen a dramatic decrease. The dramatic decrease is not due to the number of incidents of domestic abuse decreasing but because the people who would normally report such incidents have far less time by themselves to report it. For such people, isolation with an abuser is far, far worse than the likely inconvenience caused by the temporary sickness from this pandemic virus. Added to that, tens of millions of people in this country have now lost their jobs. They struggle to put food on the table, to support their families, to keep their homes. Given a choice, most of those people would surely rather be sick for a number of weeks than face such financial ruin. For such people, the cure is worse than the disease. For an entirely different and extremely vocal section of the American populace, though, the issue is that their freedom to do what they want when they want has been restricted and these are the people who usually complain that the cure is worse than the disease. In particular, apparently hair cuts and manicures are essential businesses to such people and they complain of their trauma of not being able to have their hair and nails done.
So, is the cure worse than the disease? The answer to that depends on another question – worse for whom? For many people it is and for many people it isn’t, even if they think that it is. For people who are extremely unlikely to die from this virus but who are likely to die from abuse or from self-harm when isolated and depressed, the cure might be worse than the disease. The problem is, of course, that no-one knows who will get just get sick and who will actually die from the virus, so really such an assessment is only based on guesswork. But for people at high risk, such as the immuno-suppressed and people over-65, then no, the cure isn’t worse than the disease, because the disease might well mean death for such people, and there really isn’t anything worse than death for an individual. So, when some people say that the cure is worse than the disease, what they’re really saying is that they don’t consider the people who have died or who are likely to die in their judgement. 3000 people died on 9/11 and it traumatized this country and changed the geopolitical structure of human society forever. Currently, the same number of people die in this country from this virus every single day, but apparently those who think the cure is worse than the disease aren’t troubled by those deaths at all. Last month, it was calculated that one American citizen dies every 45 seconds from this virus. That’s how enormous this virus is in this country. And yet, there are still people who say that the cure is worse than the virus. The only way they can say that is by saying that people staying at home and businesses closing and even people losing their jobs is something worse than one person dying every 45 seconds.
Even if after truly acknowledging that sobering statistic someone genuinely thought that the cure was worse than the disease, the response is not to abandon the cure but to change it. That’s why I mentioned all the Talmudic cures at the beginning of this sermon. No-one does that any more. It became clear that those cures didn’t work, so the Jewish community stopped using them. If the cure isn’t effective, don’t just condemn the afflicted person to suffering - get a better cure. If a medically-informed response to a pandemic creates economic hardship so serious that the economic impacts are deadlier than the virus, the appropriate response is not to abandon a cure and just leave the weak and vulnerable to die – the appropriate response must be to change your economic system. You cannot prevent people dying from poverty by condemning others to die from a preventable illness. That is deeply, deeply immoral. You prevent people dying from poverty by changing what brought them into poverty in the first place, as well as what locks them into poverty once they are there. In other words, for anyone who thinks that the cure is worse than the disease, the responsibility is on them to find a better cure, not to give up and just let the old and weak die. Deuteronomy 25:17-18 describes people who encourage the old and the weak to die. There, we read, “Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt – when you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and attacked all who were lagging behind.” That was Amalek, the sworn enemy of Israel, the exact opposite of anything Divine. Anyone who wants to open up this country to business while condemning the less physically able in this society to likely death is no better than Amalek. If the cure isn’t working, if the cure causes more harm than good – like the Talmudic cures I mentioned - then change the cure, don’t just give up on a cure and let the vulnerable suffer.
There are not two sides to this. It is not a case of shut down the country vs open up the country. The only moral thing we can do right now, based on every single piece of medical evidence, is to continue to shut down the country or risk even more mass death. That is the cure. To say otherwise is to live the ethics of Amalek. The actual question is whether or not that is the best cure? Let’s go back to those cures that I mentioned from Talmud. What’s extraordinary about them is how flexible they are. If this version of the cure isn’t possible, try that version. If that version of the cure isn’t possible, try another version. And is that isn’t possible, try yet another version. Don’t give up on the cure, change the cure, make the cure better. The only cure right now is to keep this country shut down. Now we have to make that cure better so that we can protect people whom that cure negatively effects. It’s not a perfect cure, it still does some harm, so we need to make that cure better.
Is the cure worse than the disease? No, of course it isn’t. Is the cure in its current form perfect? No, of course it isn’t. At Temple Beth Shalom, we work to make sure that this cure is the most humane cure possible. We reach out to those in need and protect those in need of support. But we will not commit the vulnerable to death just because the less vulnerable have been inconvenienced. This virus, if nothing else, has held up a mirror to American society and once again revealed its failings, particularly its economic failings. We have to work for a better cute, for a better, more equitable society. Let us use this time to think about how we might bring that society into existence, and let us say, Amen.