Ministry of Health warns Rabbi Yuval Asherov: Misleading and endangering the public

February 14, 2021   

The Ministry of Health issued an unusually severe statement today (Sunday) against Rabbi Yuval Ashroff's publications on vaccines and the coronavirus pandemic - warning that this is a danger to public health. The advisory committee for examining misleading the public in the ministry's advertising announced: "Those who act on his publications may avoid protective behavior and reduce infection, while violating emergency regulations... In this way, his publications constitute dangerous and misleading advertising for public and individual health." The statement further stated: "Ashroff does not hold a license to practice medicine or any health profession, not even physiotherapy, as reported in the media. The misleading information provided by him or in his publications cannot guide the public in everything related to dealing with the coronavirus or be interpreted as a recommendation or instruction of medical value." The ministry further claims: "In his publications, Mr. Yuval HaCohen (-Ashrov) claims to advise the public, directly and implicitly, on the nature of the coronavirus pandemic that is affecting the entire world, while conveying misleading information about its morbidity, at a time when an epidemic is taking place in Israel and around the world that is claiming victims at any given moment, of all ages, and even in healthy people." The Ministry of Health noted that medical professionals around the world have been studying the pandemic for a long time and are trying to prevent death or irreversible damage to patients, fighting for their every breath. "Mr. HaCohen (-Ashrov) ignores the professional knowledge that is constantly updated throughout the world, the testimonies of the teams and families who saw their loved ones die before their eyes, and of the people who were sick and managed to get out of the difficult phase and turn to restoring their physical and mental condition, and the possible risk of future damage in the long term, and claims to know better, and even irresponsibly misleads and endangers his listeners." The Ministry of Health emphasizes: "The public is not made up of one piece, and is made up of many people with different demographic and morbidity characteristics - the elderly, pregnant women, people with diseases or medications that suppress the immune system from the start, oncological diseases in various stages of morbidity and treatment, depression and anxiety and mental stress, and those staying in settings where the risk of infection is high, such as boarding schools, nursing homes, therapeutic settings, and more." All of these, and many others, hear his words and trust him in his presentation as "a rabbi and a knowledgeable person" - and this, when his statements have no current factual or professional basis. "For example, misleading and dangerous statements, 'This monster called Corona is nothing more than a regular flu,' 'Most of those who carry the virus do not get sick,' 'The body knows how to heal everything on its own without external intervention,' 'We have nothing to get too excited about, it will pass on its own,' 'The body knows how to vaccinate itself and overcome things on its own,' 'This is not a pandemic,' 'Corona does not cause disease, what kills is the toxicity.'" The advisory committee added that it "even claims to understand and recommend how to prevent infection with the Corona virus and calls for avoiding vaccinations despite the damage and danger of the disease and despite the evidence of the effectiveness of vaccines in reducing severe morbidity. Evidence that is frequently collected, studied and controlled by competent and professional authorities around the world and in Israel, both in preliminary studies and during recent weeks - when tens of millions of people, including millions of people in Israel, have been vaccinated.".