For pregnant women, vaccines and variants create confusion and fear.

For most of the past year, young mothers in Lakewood, New Jersey, have experienced an epidemic as devastating as life and death.

This is not to say that the community has not experienced part of its outbreak; That is. Or that families have not lost loved ones; They have. But to hear a young mother from a large, small community say that, part of the epidemic crisis passed. Most people recovered from the virus, they thought, and only the elderly and high risk are needed to stay at home. And to watch Instagram videos of frequent indoor weddings in town, where any guests wear masks, the black days of last March are almost forgotten.

For many, the lockdown of thousands of Ishiwa students in the city from the largest Ishiwa local base in Israel, Bays Madresh Gevoha, was not the price they wanted to pay at the end of the month. While children and young people have a lower risk of death or have a serious illness caused by COVID, keeping children home from school was considered by many to be more harmful than the virus.

That has changed in recent weeks, as news of the death of a 37-year-old woman was earlier realized to be healthy earlier by WhatsApp groups, at the same time misinformation caught up about a new coronavirus vaccine potentially threatening fertility. In a community where childbearing and motherhood are common among women, both of these events have brought home the seriousness of the epidemic for many young mothers in the city.

“These stories don’t make us less anxious to tell the least,” said the 30-year-old Lakwood resident, who is pregnant. She waited to be vaccinated against the coronavirus until her COVID-19 test came back positive last week, so she was disqualified for that time.

Lakewood, with the Haredi Orthodox community, making up more than half of the city’s population over 100,000, is New Jersey’s most fertile city. In 2015, it recorded 45 live births per 1,000 inhabitants – four times the state average per rate and the highest in the world. So, there was a stir among the locals when rumors started circulating that the soon-to-arrive COVID-19 vaccines would affect fertility.

The rumors started at a time when New Jersey was starting to vaccinate, and they took root on social networks and messaging platforms, Instagram and WhatsApp, which are popular among Russian women.

In a WhatsApp group organized by Orthodoxy Jews to discuss Savid, a woman said she was considering going to Israel, but the mayor of the Israeli city of Lod said her parents would need to get their children vaccinated before they could go to school. .

In the second group, the women compared Israel’s recommendation that pregnant women be vaccinated by Nazi doctors against the persecution of Jews. “Disgusting !! They are really experimenting on Jews !! One woman wrote.

Many people shared information about the drug cocktail made by the Hasidic doctor, Vladimir Zelenko, that appealed to Donald Trump, but was later found to be ineffective and harmful in some cases. Someone else shared a video of Zelenko in which he said young, healthy people don’t need to be vaccinated. He suggested taking zinc to prevent “viral replication” and said, “In my medical opinion, no one needs a vaccine.”

In early January, Mingal Weinstein, an Orthodox Instagram influencer who lives on Long Island and has more than 21,000 followers, posted an Instagram livestream of Dr. Lawrence Pelvsky Samprasang spoke. Hundreds of vaccinated activists by Haredi Orthodox Jews were present in Mons, New York. In the video, Pelvsky suggests that the vaccine is a lucrative move by drug companies – and that it could contribute to infertility.

Towa Herskowitz, a 30-year-old mother of four living in Tom River, an Orthodox community in neighboring Lakewood, New Jersey, said many of her friends are confused about the vaccine and don’t know who to trust.

“It’s scary to know that there are also women who want to say anything about this vaccine,” he said, adding that popular Instagram influencers in the Orthodox community have spread false information about the vaccine. “Many of my friends follow these people.”

Dorough. Mark Kirshenbaum, a pediatrician studying in Borough Row Park and Williamsburg, both Hasidic communities where weddings and other social events resumed their pre-epidemic months ago, said he thinks about 20% of his patients’ families are “suspicious of the vaccine.” . “Most children vaccinate their children against other diseases because of school requirements, but the COVID-19 vaccine is currently an alternative if you can get one,” he said. The pace of their development and their innovation means they expect even more skepticism.

“People are more afraid of the vaccine than the virus,” Kirshenbum said.

To counter this fear, Orthodox health care professionals who spent the last year seriously taking epidemiological guidance to their communities are now focusing on building confidence in new vaccines.

The Jewish Thordx Ox Women’s Medical Association, an organization for female doctors and medical students, is misrepresenting the fact sheets and podcasts produced by it. And a group of devout Jewish nurses is discussing the vaccine, hosting weekly calls on accessible hotlines for women who do not use the Internet for religious reasons, and hosting weekly calls at 9pm on Thursdays, when most children are in bed and women often cook for Shabbat. Makes.

“Even if you’re not on the Internet, there’s a lot of information and misinformation about being vaccinated against Covid-19,” said Toby Shaw, a nurse in Miami and founder of EMES. Promoting science-based medical information in the Orthodox community that organizes calls. “It’s very difficult to get out information that is accurate.”

Doctors have said they have been making dozens of phone calls over the past two months about the safety of the vaccines, with many questioning whether the vaccines are safe for young women or for women who are already pregnant.

Head of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology at Hospital Sinai South Nassau on Long Island and Rabbi Dr. Said Aaron Glatt, an assistant rabbi at Young Israel, one of the largest orthodox monasteries in Nassau County, Long Island. Parents of young women who have started dating today and who would like to conceive soon after marriage, asking if the vaccine could be a problem.

“If anyone asks me, I recommend them take it,” Glatt said. “You’re dealing with the real risks of dying or having serious complications from COVID versus COVID when there is no real theoretical reason why you should be dangerous.”

He added: “There is zero evidence to suggest there is any risk with infertility.”

In Lakewood, C.H.M.E.D. The named health clinic raised the alarm about covid cases in young women and said that in some cases miscarriages occurred.

“Unlike in the beginning of the epidemic, when most of the elderly and men were at risk, we are now seeing women aged 35-45 in many hospitals,” he wrote in a message published by Lakewood Scoop. They advised pregnant women to talk to their doctors about whether they should be vaccinated, “regardless of whether you have covid before.” Pregnant women are eligible to be vaccinated in New Jersey from January 15 and will be eligible in New York from February 15.

Education campaigns have gained momentum from many unfortunate stories sitting at home in Israel and Lakewood. In Israel, six pregnant women hospitalized in critical condition were infected with a new British COVID variant, which suggested the Israeli government give preference to pregnant women for vaccination.

And in Lakewood, locals were stunned to learn that Basha Rand, a 37-year-old mother of three living in neighboring Tommy’s River, died of covid last month. Rand was not pregnant, but she was an artist of an Orthodox mother, moved from Nevada to New Jersey shortly before her death so that her children could study at Yashiv and attend her eldest Orthodox high school.

“Bashi has been my daughter’s speech therapist for the past few months,” one person commented on a post on a local news site about a fundraiser for Rand’s family, which has raised more than 50 450,000. “I have never met a person as kind and caring and dedicated as him.”

Local volunteers with the Covid Plasma Initiative, who connect people who test positive for COVID in hospitals and administer monoclonal antibody treatment to outpatient clinics, are encouraging pregnant women to consider treatment if they become ill. But some volunteers with projects like Chedwa Thuman also say they are not sure if the vaccine is suitable for everyone.

Thuman, a high school teacher, and her husband, who are at high risk of complications, received the vaccine last week. “If I thought it was really something unsafe, I wouldn’t have got it myself.”

But she’s not sure she’ll do the same for her daughter, who is 20 and lives in Israel where she works from home and her husband has already had covid. (Israel now vaccinates anyone over the age of 16.) Thuma was heard to have raised fertility questions about the vaccine and was not sure what to believe, especially since the vaccine is so new.

On the other hand, he said, when it comes to his community in Lakewood, Thuman said he has heard of two or three more pregnant women who have fallen seriously ill with COVID in the last two weeks alone. He hopes women will be more cautious.

“I had double pneumonia last week at the age of 22,” he said. “There’s a lot going on here so we’re trying to be more careful with the word.”