Why is it critical that hundreds of people work in parallel to develop a vaccine for corona?

Dozens of companies focus on developing a vaccine for corona. Hundreds of scientists and medical experts deal with it from morning to night and huge budgets are devoted to it. Why is it so important to have hundreds of partners in the move?

Why is it critical that hundreds of people work in parallel to develop a vaccine for corona?

Dozens of companies around the world are focusing, working and working on developing a vaccine for the Corona virus, which has caused an international upheaval and the deaths of over half a million people. Hundreds of scientists and medical experts are involved from morning to night in the development of the vaccine, and millions of dollars are devoted to it. Why is it so critical that there are many who deal with it?

In the Tractate Eruvin Daf Yad, the concept of the wisdom of the masses is mentioned. Various experiments have shown that when you let a large group of people answer one question - in many cases the average answer obtained will be closer to the truth than the answer of a single person, even if he is an expert in the field. This idea was already known to the sages of the Gemara. So they were divided on a particular halakhic question and did not reach a decision. Oh what did they do? So it is told there. One amora said to his friend, "Go out and see what the people are doing." 

Rabbi Chaim David Kowalski, the presenter of the digital gemara, went on to explain that "when you do not know what the halakhah is, one way to find out is to see what the custom is among the people, what Jews do. If there is a common practice of acting like a certain opinion - there is a good chance ".

Volunteer in experiment with Corona vaccine (Photo: AP)

A volunteer in a modern test trial of a modern company against Corona receives a shot of the vaccine at the beginning of the third and final stage of the clinical trial (Photo: AP)

Sages were divided, for example, on what a thirsty person blesses, who wants to drink water: in one opinion, he blesses "that everything be according to his word," while in the opinion of Rabbi Tarpon, for drinking water one blesses "the Creator of souls." In this case too, Abbey said, go out and see what the people are doing. It turned out that the custom is that before drinking one is blessed that everything will be according to his word, and after drinking one is blessed by the Creator of souls, and thus indeed the ruling ceased.

What is the explanation for this? How do ordinary Jews know what Halacha is? Who said that what the majority does, is what is right to do? The answer is based on the words of Rabbi Yitzchak Abarbanel in his commentary "Nachlat Avot", according to which it is possible to deceive some people all the time, and it is possible to deceive all people some of the time, but it is impossible to deceive all people all the time. The more people engage in a particular subject, the more the truth will become clear, and it will not be possible to hide it.

It is easy to mislead individuals. In fact, in many cases the person is the one who is misleading himself. Instead of thinking and figuring out the subject properly, he is drawn to all sorts of personal interests that he has, to prejudices, to various psychological influences. But, the more people clarify the issue, the more these effects diminish. If some people tend in a certain direction, others tend in the opposite direction and we balance them. In this way, the possibility of deception diminishes, and the truth emerges.

Preserving the Jewish tradition (Photo: Olbia Fitoussi, Flash 90)

Praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, July 29, 2020 (Photo: Olbia Fitoussi / Flash 90, Flash 90)

Rabbi Kowalski added that "From all these things, we learn about the great importance of tradition. Tradition expresses the ideas that have already been tested. Ideas that the whole people have been following for hundreds or thousands of years, and see that they are indeed" working ", that they are successful and beneficial. "Our existence, the secret of survival, we trust our grandfather, and our great-grandfather and so on, that's the wisdom of the masses. Just as we preserve what we saw in previous generations, so will our children take it further."

Want to learn more topics according to the Gemara? This is your chance to join the digital gemara venture. This is a project in which you will watch a daily video clip based on the daily page presented by Rabbi Kowalski, founder and head of the Daf Yomi daily organization. As part of this, each person can be part of hundreds of thousands in Israel and around the world who make sure to regularly study one page of Gemara a day, by watching a short daily video clip.

The section on the wisdom of the masses is based on the daily page in Tractate Eruvin, Daf Yad, and is also published in full on the Digital Gemara website. In the section, you will meet daily at significant and fascinating points related to daily life, based on the daily study of the Gemara. The project is free of charge for its participants.

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