Vaccine Education & Accessibility Seminar with Rabbi Dr. Aaron Glatt

good evening everyone and welcome to tonight's very special program very special event called vaccine education and accessibility seminar is we have such a tremendous program tonight it's being presented by kazakh and the uja federation we're gonna have the great honor to hear um a very special keynote address from rabbi dr aaron glatt um and we will be hearing um short opening remarks from rabbi yolo shonenfeld the the rov of the young israel of the of kew garden sales as well as uh rabbi ephraim glott um the son of rabbi dr aaron glatt will be introducing um his father by dr aaron glatt and we want to just give um some a a few programming notes for tonight um to the right of your screen right now um there's a live chat box and which is being which is being moderated by uh joma physicians if you have any any questions um about um you have any questions regarding any of the um regarding the vaccines um please um please feel free to submit it it's to the right of your of you of this video right now the chat box asks your questions which will be addressed right there and we want to um we want to thank everyone for joining us and everyone before before we start tonight's program everyone should share this link tell your friends family share it on social media and whatsapp tell you everyone to join this very special program they can log in right now at hazak.org live c-h-a-z-a-q dot o-r-g slash live l-i-v-e kazakh.org live and um tonight we're going to be um learning um about the vaccine and all the different um facts and um and um all tremendous uh potent very important information tonight about the vaccines and um we're going to be hearing right now from rabbi dr aaron glatt um but but before we hear from his keynote address a little bit in a few minutes from now but we're going to be hearing right now from rabbi yolo schonfeld the rabbi of the young israel of kew garden cells i cannot impress enough the importance of getting vaccinated for the corona for the cold virus imagine if people would have refused to vaccinate in the 1950s and 1960s for polio we never would have conquered the disease we never would have conquered tuberculosis we have this bracha called a vaccine today to rid ourselves of covet we must do it it's that simple because of the internet people are reading about all kinds of convoluted ideas and schemes that the medical industry is up it's it's false narrative please make sure that you get vaccinated i salute everybody on this program tonight who's pushing that idea hello everyone at hazak it's really very appropriate that khazakh which is an organization dedicated to khashed which spends its time encouraging kaiser and doing kaiser in the kew garden hills and queens community and well beyond it's very appropriate that they're talking about vaccinations in this parasha of acharya most kadoshim which mentions the pastor via kamoka what better way to do the mitzvah to get vaccinated and to encourage vaccinations of your friends so we could all get back to normal as soon as possible it is truly an honor to introduce my father rabbi dr aaron glatt who is the associate rabbi at young israel of woodmere and is the chairman of medicine and the hospital epidemiologist at south mountain sinai south nassau my father has been consulted by organizations both in the jewish world and beyond and how to guide them about how to get out of this pandemic it would do everyone well to listen carefully to the words of my father and we should all get vaccinated as soon as possible thank you very much so the tremendous thanks to according and thanks to hazak and to the uja for bringing this event to the community the importance of such an event is critical for people to understand that this is truly i am giving this talk a couple of weeks before it's actually going to be presented to sieber so people have to keep in mind that i'm giving this talk on gimel er which translates to april 14th and as i'm speaking out the advisory committee on immunization practices is making a determination as to what to do with the j and j vaccine which has been paused so i'll talk about it but obviously there will be information that's coming out in between the time that i'm giving this talk and when it will actually be presented so therefore people need to keep that in mind with everything that i said so i'm also giving it in the week of parshas tazria that is the classical partisan dealing with quarantine and how appropriate a parachute is for the jewish people at this point in time will we remain in a certain level of quarantine although hashem with great thanks to our kurdish baruch he has given us the refuga for this tremendously difficult marker we have barak hashem a potential to get out of this terrible mahala this terrible mage for this terrible pandemic that has unfortunately claimed so many lives in the world in the united states and in our communities we remember last year at this time shortly after pesach doing zoom shiva because we were all never in quarantine we all had saras in a somewhat non-actual way we couldn't go to in schools we couldn't go in public we couldn't go and visit friends who were never suffering we couldn't go visit loved ones in the hospital that has the ability to change it's already changing but it has the tremendous ability to fully change if we all get vaccinated has given us the reform the cohen has to go beside that tells us that the cohen what he did the first time he has to do the second time so we don't want to make the same mistakes that we made the first time we don't want to duplicate mistakes that we made the second time there's been never too much spread of this illness because sometimes we haven't been as careful as we should have been and that but we see the real life consequences when we're not careful but now we have a potential to stop this epidemic in its tracks according to has granted the doctors the scientists the ability to find multiple several different very successful vaccines that can prevent this mahalo from attacking an individual and if enough people take it can prevent this pandemic from spreading any further and can allow us to go back to the normal wonderful lives the closeness of the shoes of the schools and all jewish spiritual light to be able to celebrate and dancing closely with each other through islam give a person a hug and a leviah we can go back to that if everybody decides to follow the recommendations of not just most of the leading doctors but essentially 100 of the leading physicians in infectious diseases i do not know a single infectious diseases physician in this united states that disagrees with the idea of culvert vaccination being the way out of this pandemic it's funny in medicine there's tremendous macho on most things the one thing that there's no mach loki's on amongst the experts the in the field is the value of vaccines not every vaccine is the same and not every vaccine should be taken by every person and yes vaccines have potential problems with them and yes vaccines aren't all perfect but each vaccine used appropriately there is hascama there's unanimity there is agreement by all the moments of the value of these vaccines and probably as much as any other vaccine the value of the covered 19 vaccines and that's why it's personally very distressing to see people that would otherwise be and it would be people that we looked to for advice unfortunately being given misinformation and given incorrect information about the value of these vaccines the great cadola who've been given accurate information have all come out very strongly some saying it's a here to take this vaccine others saying it's strongly recommended and even those that have not been known to be in favor of vaccinations in general say go and ask your physician whether you should take this and as i said all 50 state departments of health in the united states all the ministries have helped throughout the world including in eric's israel we've seen firsthand the great benefits the kittish hashem that was made in eric's throat with the flies of vaccine rollout we've seen the infectious disease society of america the society of hospital epidemiologists the cdc and numerous other organizations all strongly recommending that people take this vaccine we've seen the great kendolia postgame jorge kanielski and many many other golem for both the ashkenazic and svaradi kim's inherits historia we've seen the great post game in the united states we've recommending that this vaccine be taken i don't want to start naming gadolin for the fear that i might leave out somebody's personal but the overwhelming majority of guidoli israel has strongly come out in support of this vaccine so you have the medical experts you have the guidolia post kim the great rabbis all saying the same story the same message we absolutely must vaccinate and everybody has to vaccinate to get the full benefit of the vaccine now why is there a hesitancy what is leading people to unfortunately say i'm going to hold back and not take this vaccine i'm going to wait a little bit more so one of the things that akhoris prachu gave us that such a bracha is being used against us hakoresh barco allowed all of the powers that be to get together to develop this vaccine with multiple different technologies with multiple different companies working in multiple different countries to simultaneously work together and people are saying well it's too fast but that's actually the bracha hakoresh bro who led agencies and people in companies and governments that normally don't work together work together in order for this vaccine production to occur at lightning speed vaccines normally take five to ten years at a minimum to be developed the ebola vaccine took five years to be developed and yet the covit 19 vaccines took under a year to develop but not because even one safety step was bypassed every single appropriate step from the pre-clinical studies the laboratory studies the studies in animals the studies in small numbers of healthy human beings and then in larger numbers of human beings and finally in large clinical phase three trials not one step was skipped and with government funding production of vaccines started to occur even before they were proven to be effective because in case they were effective as baruch hashem they were they could roll out the production of the vaccines even before they were approved no company would ever do this they could lose their shirts they could lose billions of dollars but the government said no you produce the vaccine even if it doesn't work we'll pay for it and years were taken off the normal production cycle of these vaccines so we were able to come up with successful vaccines in such a short period of time but not one safety step was in any way skipped or bypassed and people are worried well it doesn't have fda approval it has emergency youth authorization which is the first step in achieving a full fda approval which by definition will take time but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be using these vaccines because they've gone through all the rigorous steps and the only thing that we're missing is time to show that they have the benefit for as long as we would like to see them have their benefit and only time will tell i didn't recommend that we use any of these vaccines before they were tried or tested we were hopeful that they would work we were encouraged with every step showing very good success but at the same time none of us recommended usage of these vaccines until they passed all the safety steps and that included outside review by people that are not financially politically or in any other way connected with the vaccine production they stand to gain nothing by approving or recommending that such vaccines be made so people have to understand there's a lot of you know misinformation out there that the doctors are being paid off that the industry and the cdc are working behind closed doors together to make all these vaccines to make money it's all stuss it's all hell it is nonsense these vaccines were produced in the normal proper way and they are unbelievably successful we had the great fortune that two separate companies producing similar but not identical vaccines with a new technology that's actually not so new we've known about it for 20 years it's being applied for the first time in this viral vaccine production but it's a it's a well understood and known mechanism and in fact these two companies pfizer bioentech together and moderna each did the exact same phase one phase two phase three trials in parallel meaning they did them at the same time but they had no connection one to the other and each of them looked at roughly 20 000 people who got the vaccine and 20 000 people who got a placebo the equivalent of a sugar pill they got a saline injection rather than the actual vaccine and then they followed them to see how many of them got covered how many of them got complications and unbelievably successful if you would ask anybody to give a number to hope how good they would be we would have said 70 efficacious eighty percent both of these vaccines again separate studies done simultaneously show the exact same results which is again a proof that it's real if two separate studies show the exact same results when you expect them to have the exact same results if they both are true and working so then that's a unbelievably good positive thing and that's exactly what happened and they showed that after two weeks after getting the vaccine the second dose nobody died from coven and that people weren't getting very sick even those small numbers of people over 95 didn't even get covered but even the small number of people that got covey got very mild or even asymptomatic illness meaning they just cultured or identified that they had the virus in their nose without ever having any symptoms of it and barak hashem they just came out this week with the six-month data and barak hashem the results are almost identical to what they were originally nobody who was vaccinated in these studies has died of covet now this is in the setting of a second and third wave where we see never very very high numbers of deaths look at eretz his strong how many of our brothers never passed away from covert have gotten very sick from covert and now the borders are opening up barak hashem the numbers in eric israel are a fraction of what they were previously because eric's israel more than any other country in the world has gone ahead and vaccinated most of its population especially the older people who are higher risk of getting serious illness hospitalization intubation and rahman al-islam death and they have successfully defended all of the people and eric's israel against this mageifa by getting such a high number of people vaccinated with more still needed we've seen similar but lower results because less people are vaccinated in the united kingdom and in the united states and in other countries in the world where vaccination is going on they're seeing also the same reduction in serious illness hashem we we haven't seen the terrible influx of patients from nursing homes that we saw last year who never had such a high rate of serious complication hospitalization and death and barak hashem they're all vaccinated now with many many are vaccinated and they borrow hashem not getting covered and not coming to the hospital to die we have to thank the ribanus shalilum for allowing us this great great scientific advance people are worried how safe is this technology so barak hashem we have hundreds of millions of doses of this mrna technology vaccine given to the arms of people i was amongst the very first people to get this i couldn't wait to get this and barak hashem with these hundreds of millions of doses we haven't identified any unusual unexpected long-term six months complications with the modern or the pfizer vaccine that is such an unbelievable thing people don't realize that the vast majority we have 100 years experience with vaccines more than that the vast majority of vaccine complications occur right after the vaccine within a short period of time sometimes minutes hours a couple of days almost all vaccine complications occur within the first six weeks of getting the vaccine well well beyond that for hundreds of millions of people with the moderna and the fisa vaccine and baruch hashem even the anaphylactic reactions which were talked about quite a bit are relatively small one in a hundred thousand one in two hundred five hundred thousand and barak hashem not one person has died from those anaphylactic reactions and we can identify a very small group of people that are at risk for that who maybe shouldn't get the vaccine think how many lives have been saved because people took the vaccine who have been exposed to covert and some of them have gotten covert very mild barack hashem but what would have happened to those high-risk individuals especially if they'd gotten covered which they did if they didn't have the vaccine the hundreds of thousands of people network in the united states so many of them in our communities we were hit harder do you think even one of those people wouldn't have jumped to take the vaccine if they knew what was never going to happen to them one everyone would have taken it so here we are why do we have to wait to rahman al-islam it's a problem we should all be taking these medications these vaccines which are the given refuge to this people are concerned that this mrna technology is going to do things to their bodies it's going to in some way change their dna it is scientifically impossible for mrna to impact dna it doesn't work that way it would be like saying well i'm going to do drink a glass of water that's going to change my dna it has the same scientific likelihood of taking a glass of water and getting the vaccine that is going to change your dna it doesn't work that way it has the word rna in it it's messenger rna it's not regular rna people have to understand science people have to understand statistics people have to be mum experts before they can give an opinion and unfortunately unfortunately we live in the time you may you most hashover where everybody's a judge and everybody goes their own way and everybody is entitled to a halachic and medical opinion even though that's not the halacha and that certainly isn't what shalhan ark says in terms of trusting if a doctor if an expert doctor says are we treating the facials which is are we treating less seriously than we are shabbos says to be mercallo shabbos to save somebody's life you are obligated to listen to him you're not allowed to listen to a lay person who says don't you know i listen to a lay rabbi who says don't be macho shabbos when the no matter that the rabbi is a huge talmud he knows by heart but he is not a doctor and he's not entitled to an opinion about an actual case of coaching officials with medicine only among the doctor is entitled to an opinion people are very very worried what may be other unknown complications will occur with these vaccines and i tell people we just don't know but i can tell you that it would be extremely unlikely based upon everything that we know in medicine today and i can tell you that it is extremely likely that people will die from covid even people that had covert we're now beginning to get more and more data to show that yes barak hashem if you had kovit you're not going to be as susceptible to getting a second episode of covet at least in the first six to eight months but even then a paper was just published this week to show that it's 84 percent effective that means it's 16 not effective we're seeing in different parts of the world especially brazil that some of these varying strains are able to attack people that had coveted in the past the fact that they had covered with a different strain doesn't offer necessarily immunity or at least not the same level of immunity that we might have hoped it would the vaccines actually provide a higher level of immunity than people get naturally these vaccines are so potent in creating an immune response in the body you actually get much higher levels of immunity that we can detect in a laboratory in a test tube than you do from natural covet and that's why the recommendation is the people that got covert a while ago should get vaccinated as well and shouldn't rely upon the fact that they quote have antibodies or they had covered they still are at risk about getting it themselves and spreading it to their loved ones to the people sitting next to them in shul so there's people sitting next to them and therefore it's important that we all understand that we're all in this together there's a famous martial by ghazal that a person was on a boat many other people on the boat and he took out a drill and he started to drill underneath his seat on the boat everybody looks at him what are you doing he said mind your own business i'm not drilling under your seat i'm drilling under my seat and he said you tipis you're full you're not living a world by yourself if you do something it impacts other people we have to be mahmeer for picacho it's absolutely a requirement in halal it's not a good idea it's not a suggestion that's the sake of brisker that's the sack of all the gedoli tower from the times of the tanoyim to the amaryam it's not a philosophical discussion it's a halachic discussion people are concerned what about the future people are very concerned if i take this vaccine it will impact fertility it will impact other unknown areas of life so all we can say is that koresbarchu tells us you have to follow the expert medical advice and a kurdish broker tells us that you have to do your hishtaglus if we were to say i'm not going to do something because it potentially has consequences and i'll just sit here and do nothing then people wouldn't take a shower they could slip in the shower people wouldn't go to shul in the car because they shall get into an accident they wouldn't walk to shore you get into an accident but we have a principal shomer hashem protects us on things that dosh bay robin where people are expecting this is a normal part of life in my humble opinion and the sack of the great gedoli adore taking a vaccine is dashbaerabhim it's something that you're obligated to do or certainly very strongly requested and recommended by the postgame and certainly the doctors to go and do to save yourself and to save all of society there is not one piece of scientific evidence to suggest that causes infertility none it's made up somebody on the internet said it and it spreads like a virus it goes viral the real virus that they're not concerned about but this silliness that goes viral on the internet that they're concerned about there is no evidence i defy anybody listening to pull up a scientific paper suggesting that there's a risk of infertility from these vaccines likewise the concern that these vaccines are going to be terrible for pregnant women they're going to cause all sorts of problems it's just not true and in fact rehman litslan we've seen pregnant women have very difficult times sometimes with kovid bar hashem most don't but some do and if they take the vaccine they wouldn't have had that there's evidence that the vaccine might even protect the baby there's evidence that nursing mothers might actually protect their babies by being vaccinated and there certainly is zero evidence to suggest that you're hurting your baby either inside of a mommy by taking the vaccine when you're pregnant and there's zero evidence to suggest that you're gonna hurt the baby if you're nursing a baby there was a paper published today that showed that mothers who nursed their babies none of them gave their babies covert the mother's hat covet but this protective antibody potentially that goes into the breast milk and that the babies might have benefited from or it may be that there's other factors involved but it's certainly not dangerous and vaccinating mothers who are nursing is certainly solid medical advice and that's what most mum recommend there are many many other concerns that people have i ask that before you listen to some person on the internet who has no credentials maybe a public figure but has no medical or often halachi credentials and even if they never do have halachi credentials but they're not given the right advice by medical experts i remember by rabbi versus telling me a famous story i've said this over many times rabbi yahshua bear salvation the robes that's all was once asked days when they came out with the watches that could be self-winding by just moving your arm and he was asked by one of the boys in the shia are you allowed to use this watch on shabbos rebbe and the robe said boys bring me a screwdriver and the rav took the watch apart to see how it works and only then could he pass into shiloh lobasa and the famous mach lokis yeshua and rebellieser we have a famous mark lokis throughout shas can you pass him something from a boss call or melissa he was a great great talmud who said you're right regular we don't passkin from bosco's we don't ask him because a person is a huge tom but doesn't know the facts you're not allowed to passkin in such a situation i've spoken back hashem with many gadolin they've asked me difficult medical questions to understand with moshe and zad sal the posse khador was an expert in the scientific things that he passed on that since eliezer wrote 20 plus volumes many dealing with complex halachic shialas knew the science when i speak with my rabbi and i speak with various godola israel they want to know the facts they need to be explained and when they understand the facts then they pass skin and every single goggle that i've spoken with when they've been explained the facts have all strongly come out advocating or even a person to take the covert 19 vaccine i didn't want to talk a lot about the j and j vaccine because it's brand new it's happening right now in miyuta de miuta 6 out of 6.8 million people had a complication that we don't know at this point in time is it or is it not related to the vaccine it's a possibility that this one in a million that's literally what it is one in a million complication could be related to the vaccine if it is so we need to know and address it i will tell you statistically speaking a one in a million complication would not change my mind one iota about recommending the vaccine the only thing it might do would be changing away some some of the things that we might do in terms of evaluating people with a vaccine a one in a million complication versus hundreds if not thousands of those millions people dying from covert that's what you have to weigh you have to do a sheikh ladas there's risks in everything in life coming here to give this there's a risk i got into a car who knows rahman al-islam what could happen people try a new food nobody ever said oh i don't want to try that new food there's a risk of anaphylaxis i never heard anybody say that except people never that have anaphylaxis in the past they're very careful but the stand person is willing to take certain risks people take medications all the time sometimes for real sometimes for not so real reasons people are willing to try everything that is uh organic people willing to try everything that is not standard medicine people are willing to try it what i'm asking is for people to believe the scientists they're looking people i don't get paid to give this talk i don't get any money from any pharmaceutical company to give this talk i have analyzed the data myself nobody told me what to say i'm considered somewhat of an expert i've looked at the data i have analyzed all of the published papers on these vaccines or at least the major ones i don't want to study more than i can i can't say i read every single paper but i've read everything that's important plus i've seen the consensus opinion from other mum there is one answer from the mum please we beg you to take this vaccine people are scared the needle sometimes the needle is so tiny i will guarantee you you won't notice that the needle went in your arm it is so small the needle it's essentially painless if you close your eyes you won't know if they put their finger on you and squeeze you a little bit you won't know when they actually stick the needle in you it's a very tiny needle turn the other way i know some people are afraid of needles you should be much more afraid of the malacha modes this is a very serious illness people are afraid of what network could happen to their children from taking this vaccine there's no evidence they just came out with the study today that in the 12 to 15 year old group hashem the vaccine is unbelievably effective in preventing covet we need to get the children vaccinated eventually as well in order to prevent this mageifa from spurting i hope i've had the opportunity to clear up some of the misconceptions there are people out there that are good people that are scared to take this vaccine i understand that i sympathize with you i would certainly do anything to protect the people that i love i would certainly do everything to protect my children my grandchildren can i in a horror i would never want to do anything that could hurt them but part of that protection is to follow what sukhana says part of that protection is to do your hishtadlus and then trust in our code part of that protection is to go and follow good medical advice that's what the torah hakadosha tells us to do rapo yirape the physician is given the right to practice medicine and we are obligated to follow medical advice i ask all of you that are in any way doubtful to sit down and speak with a knowledgeable physician don't go on the internet it's probably a good advice in general don't go on the internet to look to see what social media experts say don't google something to see ridiculous claims go to the authoritative definitive websites like the cdc like the department of health like the professional medical societies the american college of physicians the infectious disease society of america the pediatric infectious disease society and numerous others the american college of obstetrics and gynecology the american society of reproductive medicine those are the places we can get unbiased accurate information and make the decision to get vaccinated as soon as you can and then be as hashem i don't have to give this via technology and we can all be in the same room together and enjoy each other's company and share him together as appropriate piezos hashem thanking for giving us the final refura to this horrible makkah thank you very very much for listening and thank you again to hazak and to the uja for putting together this wonderful event thank you so much rabbi dr glatt for your tremendous words of um of of guidance and direction and we want to thank everyone for joining us tonight at this very special program um which was presented by hazak and the uja federation we want to thank rabbi schoenfeld and rubbed by efraim glove for their opening remarks as well as rabbi dr aaron glaff for taking over this precious time of his precious schedule to address us on this very special topic and uh we want to thank um um the joma physicians for addressing the chat box which is the to the right of this screen and we want to thank everyone for joining us tonight and we hope everyone has a great night you