www.jewishpress.com
Friday, November 27, 2020 • 11 Kislev 5781
Netanyahu, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize
Metro N.Y.C.
$2.00
Pompeo Helps Israel Strengthen Ties With Neighbors
Former First Minister of Northern Ireland Lord David Trimble has nominated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office. Lord Trimble won the prize himself in 1998 for his efforts to find a solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland. As a Nobel laureate, his nomination of Netanyahu and Prince bin Zayed will lead the Norwegian Nobel Committee to discuss the issue. The announcement comes less than a month after a ministerial delegation from the United Arab Emirates landed in Israel for the first-ever official visit from the Gulf state following the Sept. 15 signing of the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords with the UAE and Bahrain at the White House. In a Nov. 20 letter to the Nobel Committee, Continued on p.2
WE ARE HERE
FO R YOU
(L-R) US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani give a press conference after their trilateral meeting in Jerusalem last week. (Credit: SIPA/SIPA/Newscom)
In This Week’s Issue: ®
(800) 624-8888
4.9
740+ Google reviews
The Power Behind Our 4.9 Rating
• Saeb Erakat, Not Just a Victim of Covid-19.......................................8 • My Mother, Irene Klass – 10 Years Later..............................................12 • May the Government Micromanage Our Lives?.........................18 • Rav Miller on Reading Romance Novels.....................................26
1.855.swipe.it fidelitypayment.com
• Learning Koheles, Shir HaShirim, and Iyov......................................32 61 18 0 0 Friday, November 27, 2020
November 2020
??
THE JEWISH PRESS
Page 1
MIND, BODY SOUL By ??
?
&
A Mental Health Magazine
?????????
A SPECIAL NEEDS MAGAZINE
???
Fall 2020
Too Much Togetherness See Page 16
Mask in the Classroom See Page 18
Will the New Covid Vaccines Be Safe and Effective?
Accessing Medicaid Waiver Services See Page 26
Precious Memories
By Yaakov Kornreich
By Rabbi Joshua Marder, MA, LMFT
O
n November 19, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, who is widely respected as America’s foremost expert in the field, appeared at a press conference of President Trump’s Covid-19 task force to deliver long-awaited good news: “Operation Warp Speed has been supporting, directly and indirectly, six candidate vaccines, four of which are either in or completed Phase III clinical trial. I want to briefly tell you about two of them. . . Two of the vaccines, one by Moderna and one by. . . Pfizer, have completed trials. . . “With regard to Pfizer, it was 95% efficacious not only against disease that’s just clinically recognizable, but severe disease. There were 10 cases of severe disease -- one in the vaccine [test patients], nine in the placebo [test patients]. For the Moderna trial, it was 94.5% efficacious. 11 severe events, 0 in the vaccine, 11 in the placebo. . . That is extraordinary. . . “The speed did not compromise at all safety nor did it compromise scientific integrity. It was a reflection of the extraordinary scientific advances in these types of vaccines which allowed us to do things in months that actually took years before. So I really want to settle that concern that people have about that,” Dr. Fauci emphasized. Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, was also impressed with the rapid pace of vaccine development. If anyone had asked scientists in January when the genome of the Covid-19 virus was first published, whether 11 months later two huge clinical trials showing such effectiveness and safety of new vaccines would have been completed, “no one would have said that was possible,” Offit
A Supplement of
See Page 10
Kosher Senior Living Specializing in Memory Care
said. “It’s the best news so far this year,” agreed Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. After the initial encouraging clinical trial results for the vaccines were announced, first Pfizer and then Moderna submitted applications to the FDA for Emergency Use Authorization, likely enabling vaccinations to begin, possibly before the end of 2020, for frontline health workers and others in the highest risk categories on a provisional basis. In another encouraging development, on November 23, AstraZeneca and Oxford University scientists announced that first results from the large scale Phase III clinical trials of their jointly developed Covid-19 vaccine showed that it was between 62% to 90% effective in preventing infections by the virus, depending upon the dose of vaccine administered.
THE CALM WITHIN THE
STORM
CONVINCING THE DOUBTERS While the need for the vaccines to be cleared by the FDA for emergency use remains urgent, the thoroughness of the FDA review and approval process will be crucial in convincing hundreds of millions of Americans later next year, when they will be more widely available, that the new vaccines really are, in fact, safe and effective, despite their Kornreich Continues on Page H3
Mental Health and Coronavirus See Page 6
A Publication of
November 2020 See Our Ad on Page 13