An open letter to the Cleveland community,
What I have been seeing daily on the front lines in the Emergency Department astounds me. What I see on the streets of our community horrifies me.
I have started to see more and more out of state license plates gracing our home city. Maybe I am misjudging, but my suspicion is that there are people coming from the New York and New Jersey area for Yom Tov.
Why? Because we can’t make a Yom Tov ourselves? Because our family is pushing us? Because we think we are above the rules? The rules of law and nature?
The coronavius is not particular in whom it infects. You may have it and not know it. The cold you had last week may, or may not, have been it. Devastating effects are seen not just in the elderly and otherwise sick, but in regular people, just like “me”. And for all the numbers of people that have died of the disease that it causes, COVID-19, there is an equal number that have a high chance of being ventilator dependent. Their numbers don’t get factored into the death toll published daily by the Ohio Department of Health, but their numbers are rising exponentially.
Do you think you are more important than your neighbor, your parents, your children? Do you think you are smarter than the rabbanim who have essentially forbidden coming or having family over for Yom Tov? Are you smarter than the medical doctors, epidemiologists and military personnel who do this professionally? Come on people. Think of someone else if not yourself. Stay home. Ma’aras ayin is real and so are the numbers.
Stay home, so I can go to work and take care of those who can’t care for themselves.
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