Does the Covid-19 virus care how people behave? The CDC’s latest guidance on isolation and quarantine periods act like it does. In an appearance on CNN, CDC Director Rachelle Walensky said that her agency reduced the recommended quarantine time for those infected with Covid in part due to human behavior. “It really had a lot to do with what we thought people would be able to tolerate,” Walensky told fill-in host Kaitlin Collins. “And so we really want to make sure that we had guidance in this moment — where we were going to have a lot of disease — that could be adhered to, that people were willing to adhere to and that spoke specifically to when people were maximally infectious.” President Biden’s top medical adviser, Dr.

Israel on Monday began trials of a fourth dose of coronavirus vaccine in what is believed to be the first study of its kind. The trial began at Sheba Medical Center, outside Tel Aviv, with 150 medical personnel who received a booster dose in August receiving a fourth shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The staff receiving the additional dose were tested and found to have low antibody levels. The first to receive the jab was Prof. Jacob Lavee, a heart transplant surgeon at Sheba. “It’s one small jab in the shoulder, but one giant leap for mankind in the global battle against COVID,” said Lavee. “I joined with a full heart, both to protect myself but no less important was my desire to protect my heart transplantation patients from the Omicron.

A number of Bnei Brak schools had an unexpected visitor on Tuesday: a Chareidi anti-vaxxer angry about the entry of vaccination programs into Israel’s schools stood outside the schools and yelled anti-vax messages with a megaphone, B’Chadrei Chareidim reported. In a video of the man standing outside a Beis Yaakov school, the man could be heard saying, among other things, “Children, don’t allow them to give you these poisonous shots. They cause death. There’s no pandemic, it’s all a bluff.” He also addressed the school principal: “The children aren’t sick. You’re sick – sick in the head.” The principal subsequently came out and threatened to call the police. In response, the man said: “Call four police cars.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said Monday the nation should consider a vaccination mandate for domestic air travel, signaling a potential embrace of an idea the Biden administration has previously eschewed, as COVID-19 cases spike. Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief science adviser on the pandemic response, said such a mandate might drive up the nation’s lagging vaccination rate as well as confer stronger protection on flights, for which federal regulations require all those age 2 and older to wear a mask. “When you make vaccination a requirement, that’s another incentive to get more people vaccinated,” Fauci told MSNBC.

Israeli missiles fired from the Mediterranean struck the Syrian port of Latakia early Tuesday, igniting a fire in the container terminal, Syrian state media reported, in the second such attack on the vital facility this month. It is also a rare targeting of the port handling most imports for Syria, which has been ravaged by a decade-old civil war and western-imposed sanctions. The state news agency SANA quoted a military official as saying that Israeli missiles fired from the west of Latakia hit the port’s container terminal, igniting fires that caused major damage. The unidentified official said firefighters were battling the flames for nearly an hour after the attack. Syria’s state-run Al-Ikhbariyah TV ran footage showing flames and smoke rising from the terminal.

On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared on ABC’s “This Week” to discuss the latest developments regarding COVID-19. ABC News’s “This Week,” co-anchor Jonathan Karl asked Fauci if he agreed with President Biden who said in a recent interview that his team said vaccine mandates for domestic air travel “isn’t necessary at this time.” Fauci told Karl, “Well, it depends on what you want to use it for. I mean, vaccine requirements for people coming in from other countries is to prevent newly infected people from getting in to the country.” “A vaccine requirement for a person getting on the plane is just another level of getting people to have a mechanism that would spur them to get vaccinated.

In a speech delivered at the Agudah Midwest Convention in Chicago, HaRav Shmuel Fuerst, Dayan of Agudath Israel of Illinois, called out seminaries for charging exorbitant tuition, thereby placing unbearable strains on frum families. “The cost today [for girl’s seminaries] is about $25,000 to $30,000. Now with the weakening dollar, they have an excuse to hike it even more,” Rabbi Fuerst said. Rabbi Fuerst called for not-for-profit seminaries to be opened in Chicago so that relief could be provided to families crushed by high seminary tuition and resultant debt. “It’s time we stop the seminaries in Eretz Yisroel [from taking] advantage of us,” Rabbi Feurst said.

Iran has threatened attacks on Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility, Yerushalayim, Tel Aviv, and Haifa in a series of tweets from an account run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The account, which tweets only in Arabic, sent a video showing explosions targeting an apparent mockup of the Dimona nuclear complex, captioned with, “Then on the day, we will deal you the fiercest blow. We will surely inflict punishment,” along with the hashtag #Dimona, the Jerusalem Post reported. In an earlier tweet, the IRGC said, “In the event of foolishness on the part of the Zionist regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran is no longer ready to destroy Tel Aviv and Haifa, but to liberate holy Quds.

Conservative commentator Candace Owens said Trump’s decision to receive a Covid-19 booster shot is not because he really believes it works, but because the former president is “too old” to do “independent research” on the vaccines. “People oftentimes forget that, like, how old Trump is,” Owens said on a video posted to Instagram. “He comes from a generation — I’ve seen a lot of people who are older, have the exact same perspective, like, they came from a time before TV, before internet, before being able to conduct independent research.

A caller who told President Biden “Let’s go, Brandon” during a holiday call says he is now receiving threatening phone calls. Jared Schmeck, a former Medford, Oregon police officer, made the comment during a livestreamed event in which Biden took calls from Americans across the country. But Schmeck says that he is now receiving vague threats from anonymous callers over what he says was nothing but a joke. “I understand there is a vulgar meaning to ‘Let’s go, Brandon,’ but I’m not that simple-minded, no matter how I feel about him,” Schmeck told The Oregonian. “He seems like he’s a cordial guy,” Schmeck said of Biden. “There’s no animosity or anything like that. It was merely just an innocent jest to also express my God-given right to express my frustrations in a joking manner.