Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Politicians prefer solving immediate problems for which they can claim credit now. But statesmen also consider approaching problems that cannot yet be seen but whose approaching footsteps can be heard. The virus is making a relatively small number of people sick. Economic depression will actually kill many more. Even unemployment lowers the lifespan significantly.  Science is outstanding at explaining what things do and why they do it. It is appallingly bad at explaining what individual people do and why we do those things. But a crowd of people acting in unison, say a crowd watching an exciting football game, a crowd gathered for revolution, a crowd subscribed to a certain ideology or theology; well, its behavior is quite easy to predict. For it is not an individual person or even a lot of individual people. No, it is a ‘thing’. A sort of huge animal with countless heads and legs but on an animal nonetheless. It is predictable and often frightening. Perspective: January-March 2020: >9,000 suicides, >8,000 ro