The YeshivaWorld blog wrote on April 20, 2020, at https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/featured/1850920/petira-of-hagaon-harav-leibel-katz-zatzal-of-boro-park-longtime-rov-posek.html that HaRav Leibel Katz zatzal died of the COVID-19 illness. “Rav Katz was Niftar from COVID-19”, says the post.
This is untrue.
As reported to Emes News, Rav Katz zt”l was admitted to Maimonides Hospital due to COVID-19 complications and, like many victims at Maimonides, they were not fed basic food or water. As is well known, in a shocking betrayal of basic patient rights and needs, Maimonides did not allow family members into the hospital to help tend to their loved ones. Rav Katz was no different.
In an effort to help assist his father, Rav Katz’s son decided he would do something different. He got himself a hazmat suit. He put it on, and snuck into the hospital, pretending to be one of the employees. When he got to his father’s bedside, he discovered that his food bag had been empty for days.
Rav Katz zt”l did not die of COVID-19. He died with COVID-19. The actual cause of death was starvation.
A hypothetical healthy visitor who was locked inside the hospital without food or water for days would have also died under those conditions.
It is sad that we lost someone of his caliber, the true talmid chachom that he was. But it adds insult to injury that the true cause of his death is being obfuscated.
Did you lose a loved one at this time, due to a non COVID-19 cause? Was the death incorrectly labeled by the media, hospital staff, or other groups as a COVID death? Feel free to share your story with us and help us expose this #sheker.
Contributing Editor, Emes News
Same thing in Israel. I know a guy who was in a hospital here in a covid ward. He said patients were not being fed.
I’ve been reading a few stories about that. Elderly parents being neglected, or if they die from something else, the death certificate saying they died from COVID-19.
The CDC said that only 6% of deaths listed as covid were covid only. 94% die with something else. An official at shaare tzedeck hospital said they didn’t lose any young healthy people there. From times of israel:
A hospital chief said most COVID-19 patients who died at his institution had around a year’s life expectancy.
“Coronavirus was the thing that tipped them over, but to be honest, for most of these patients who died here in Shaare Zedek, the chance is they had a year of life expectancy, not much more,” said Ofer Merin.
Around 1 in 10 Israelis who have died from coronavirus succumbed at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, where Merin is director-general. Almost all of the institution’s fatalities were both elderly and had other diseases, he told The Times of Israel.
“Most of the patients who died would maybe be alive now, but coronavirus didn’t affect them in a different way than flu,” he said, drawing a parallel between COVID-19 and common influenza as diseases whose fatalities are mostly elderly people with preexisting conditions.
“We did not lose a single patient who was a healthy young person,” he commented.
The current coronavirus death count in Israel is 278, and the Health Ministry has provided age profiles for the first 237 fatalities. There were two people in their thirties, three in their forties, seven in their fifties, and 23 in their sixties. The rest were aged 70 or older, and the average age of the entire group was 81.3. The data did not include details of preexisting conditions.
At Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, chief medical officer Eyal Zimlichman also reported a high incidence of other illnesses in patients who have died from COVID-19.
“The vast majority had preexisting conditions, more than 95%,” he told The Times of Israel, adding that the average age of death in his hospital’s coronavirus wards has been 75 to 80. Zimlichman said he couldn’t estimate the life expectancy of patients who died.
The doctors’ comments come amid growing debate over whether Israel has handled the coronavirus crisis well, or overreacted.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced, when introducing coronavirus restrictions in March, that he was doing so to “save the lives of tens of thousands.” To some, like Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, who recently stepped down as director-general of the Health Ministry, the fact that the current death toll is much lower than feared reflects a successful strategy, while others including Yaakov Litzman, who was health minister until Sunday, claim otherwise. Litzman said in an interview on Sunday that “panic” in the government was “overblown.”