Thousands of Orthodox Jews participated in a COVID-19 study last year. The first results are in.

March 10, 2021 / Shira Hanau

(JTA) — One year after COVID-19 first walloped Jewish communities in the United States, a scientific study has confirmed something that many in the communities have long believed: gatherings during the week of Purim served as superspreader events.

A paper published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open, a peer-review journal that is open to the public, concludes that the coronavirus was spreading widely in Orthodox communities across the country last spring around that Jewish holiday — before public health warnings were given about the dangers of large assemblies.

The paper was peer-reviewed, meaning that its conclusions have been scrutinized and accepted through a rigorous process. Now its authors — four Orthodox Jewish physicians who engineered a study of thousands of blood samples from Orthodox Jews who contracted COVID-19 spanning five states — say their paper has lessons as public health officials steer Americans through the pandemic’s next phase.

“There should be specific recommendations for each religious and ethnic community,” said Dr. Israel Zyskind, a pediatrician in Brooklyn and one of the authors. “They should be culturally sensitive, which is not something we’ve seen with the pandemic, especially early on.”

The post Thousands of Orthodox Jews participated in a COVID-19 study last year. The first results are in. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Skip The Scoop | Seek Understanding

Pulitzer winner Seymour Hersh claims US Navy behind Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion | New York Post

By Great Bloggers | February 13, 2023

WASHINGTON — Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has alleged US Navy divers laid bombs that destroyed the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea last September, drawing a denial from the Pentagon Wednesday.

Hersh, who scooped journalism’s top award more than five decades ago for exposing the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by US troops in 1968, cited an unnamed source in reporting on Substack that Americans planted remotely triggered explosives that wrecked three of the four pipelines built to carry natural gas from Russia to Europe.

Hersh, 85, went on to claim that the Navy conducted the operation under the cover of a NATO maritime exercise, BALTOPS 22.

In a short statement, Pentagon spokesman Marine Corps Lt. Col. Garron J. Garn told The Post “the United States was not involved in the Nord Stream explosion,” reiterating the Defense Department’s response to the same question in October.

Swedish officials suspected the blasts were the result of “gross sabotage,” and some Western officials were quick to blame the attacks on Moscow as it blocked gas supplies to Europe in response to sanctions over last year’s invasion of Ukraine.

“These are deliberate actions, not an accident,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at the time. “The situation is as serious as it gets.”

Pulitzer winner Seymour Hersh claims US Navy behind Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion | New York Post