There can be no half-measures, we must take this seriously now

The Torah says "vehai bahem" - you shall live by them. Valuing life is at the core of our culture and yet so many Torah observant Jews right now seem to be fine with risking thousands of lives for the sake of davening with a minyan, having Shabbat meals with guests and learning in yeshiva. Really, these aspects of our lifestyle are worth risking thousands of lives of our brothers and sisters?

Is your right to tfila betzibur, to play in a playground, to have company on Shabbat, so important that you don't mind risking spreading a potentially lethal disease with no known cure or vaccine that apparently can do severe damage even to many of those who survive it? Do you have the right to risk the elderly and the immunocompromised for the sake of going about your daily life as you please?

What happened to kol Yisrael areivim zeh lazeh? What happened to venishmartem meod lenafshoteikhem?

I could understand if Bibi got up last night at the press conference and announced that the only cure for Covid 19 was to eat pork and and burn a sefer Torah, even then, one could argue that for pikuah nefesh, maybe even then one would have to go along with this.

But this is not what was announced at the press conference last night. They asked people to self-isolate, to stay home as much as possible, they closed malls, theatres, cinemas, schools, gannim, wedding halls, to stop people gathering in large crowds. And you think that somehow shuls and yeshivot are immune? You haven't heard of the rabbis who've accidentally infected their worshippers? The shul goer who caused a community wide outbreak in New Rochelle?

This can't be a halfway thing. Stop inviting. Stop socialising in person. Stop hanging out in playgrounds. Stop going to minyan. Just stop. These are not normal times, this is an unknown virus, everyone is stil learning how to fight it. Better to err on the side of extreme caution, at the expense of inconvenience, at the expense of the economy, at the expense of sacrificing big gatherings for seder or tfila betzibur, and by doing so save lives, than to wait until it is too late and our health system is so overwhelmed that people die for lack of care, when they could have been otherwise saved.

I would rather next Purim you all laugh at me as an idiot for "overreacting" but that we are all alive and well and able to laugh about it than for has veshalom next Purim be turned in to a time of mourning for all the lives that could have been saved if only if only everyone in the community had done what was necessary to fight this plague.