Thus we failed in the struggle against the Corona

The most important marker for understanding mortality from Corona is age, and Israel is a very young country. It is not France, nor is it Sweden. Israel has other advantages, which have now been revealed in an impressive vaccination campaign for which everyone should receive credit – an excellent centralized health system, good logistical capability due to its limited size, constant preparedness for emergencies, certain social safety nets and more.

So yes, anyone who wants to compare Israel to an old and much larger country like Spain, and come to the conclusion that our situation is relatively good, can do so. But this is a kind of lie. There are countries much larger than ours – South Korea or Taiwan, for example – that are much better off.

There are young countries like us that are in much better shape. In general, just as Israel enjoyed patting itself on the back about an extraordinary vaccination campaign, saying it was because of its capabilities, it needs to make a similar estimate to examine 4,000 dead from Corona, in the midst of a severe third wave imposing a burden on hospitals. This is going to be a limited list of failures, certainly not exhaustive.

How do you lose public trust? Announce that the public needs to mobilize for austerity measures, then give up personal example and transparency. While the country suffers from exceptional morbidity and unemployment, our leaders have behaved rather badly.

How do you lose public trust? Announce that the public needs to mobilize in favor of harsh, horrific measures in their economic and human costs, and then give up personal example, transparency and more. The prime minister and the president both violated the restrictions. This may have happened a long time ago, but it is recalled; So are the violations of the Minister of Health at the time, Litzman, and only this week of Minister Miri Regev.

While the country suffers from exceptional morbidity and unemployment, our leaders have behaved quite badly overall. Another personal example: Prime Minister Netanyahu could have made sure and asked that his trial not be postponed, despite the closure. This would ensure a sense that this is a completely matter-of-fact decision. Loss of trust is also linked to empathy. Israel now provides reasonable support, by international comparison, to those who have lost their job or livelihood due to the medical condition; But this support was obtained only after protests and public outrage. Not as part of an orderly program.

In other words – where is the country. The answer, of course, is a combination of incompetence and lack of political courage. The fact that there is no enforcement of the restrictions in educational institutions in the ultra-Orthodox public has had a devastating effect in the run-up to the second and third waves. The fact that there was no isolation enforcement in the Arab public before the third wave had a severe impact. The damage here is twofold. First, incubators of infection are formed in educational institutions. Second, the public is losing faith that government measures are relevant.

It is clear to everyone that decisions about local closures or their absence, or enforcement in certain localities, are related to party politics and government survival. The result is a loss of trust, enforcement problems, mass infection. Those who pay the price per capita are mainly these communities: the mortality rate among ultra-Orthodox and Arabs is significantly higher than the general public.

It’s an amazing thing, and awful, that we are in this event for about a year and there is still no obligation to present a negative test before boarding a flight to Israel. Israel is an island nation for all intents and purposes; It has a single entrance gate in a practical way. She did not take advantage of this advantage at all. On the contrary: the inspections at Ben Gurion Airport came late. The government did not bother to legally regulate isolation rules, and sent conflicting messages throughout the last few months, succumbing to commercial pressures from time to time. Israel imported and in fact continues to import disease.

Closures are a terrible thing to avoid, but they do reduce adhesion. This is the finding that emerges from studies after peer review, and many such. But in order not to reach them, and to avoid the collapse of the health system, it is possible to better protect the at-risk populations that can reach the hospital. And once they are there – make sure the health care system has enough resources. The capabilities of the health care system have been greatly strengthened in recent months, and the struggle of medical teams over patients is very different from the standards practiced in some other industrialized countries.

But the heads of the internal departments – who are Israel’s front line in this struggle – say that what was promised to them simply did not happen. The corona costs Israel billions every week. Why do they even have to shout that shout now? Ideas to focus protection on the elderly and at-risk populations without any social distance in the general population have not been tried or succeeded in the world – Sweden is an example of this.

But Israel is a very small and efficient country, and instead of expanding and deepening Operation Magen Avot, so that more cases will be identified and quickly, the country has faltered. The result: an increase in the proportion of the elderly who are infected with the current wave, and therefore also more dead. Success should be noted: Israel is among the world leaders in the number of tests per capita, and this is clearly an extraordinary success. Another success is the consent of Israelis to wear a mask everywhere. These are not obvious things, and they have probably saved a lot of mortality in recent months. But the system of truncating the adhesive chains is barely functioning, and the fact is that it fails to stop outbreaks.

Hermetic closure then rapid opening, and often without tiered steps. Let us take as an example the months of May-June 2020. The government stormed a rapid opening of the economy, including Netanyahu’s famous “Make Life,” without obeying explicit warnings from experts. On June 13, the events industry opened up, and of course poor enforcement – and poor public discipline – led to the second wave. At the same time the government opened the schools, again, very quickly, and of course the result was a wave of eruptions.

These months were wasted – without a projector with powers, without an increase in tests, without an epidemiological system. Netanyahu may be right in his diagnosis that local closures have not proven themselves around the world, but it is impossible to shake the economy and Israeli society between closing and opening extremes. It’s not good for morbidity, and it’s not good for public trust. The state opted for a roller coaster of closures and openness, without presenting any strategic goal.

As the numbers go up, you get into quick pressure; When they go down, economic and political pressures immediately affect. The government could adopt an approach of up to a few dozen infected a day. It could have adopted an approach of protection for the elderly only and practical herd vaccination. It could have adopted the economic approach, and in terms of human life, quite proved itself – an attempt to reach zero contagion, as in Singapore and New Zealand (at the cost of one sharp and long closure). She took no approach, and simply proceeded from one outburst to another.

Blame it on everyone, on all of us. Politicians quickly understood the game: they would be against restrictions, and that’s how they would rake in support. No matter what happens in the world, no matter what the price. Committees in the Knesset that have decided that the professionals in the Ministry of Health are worth nothing, so they will decide on open gyms – no matter what. Or they will reject other restrictions, the whole purpose of which is to avoid a general locksmith – by lowering the adhesive in front of it.

MKs and ministers competed among themselves over who could provide more relief. Parts of the media were fascinated by superficial arguments, which are not backed up by facts, and the more provocative the claim, the better. The Ministry of Health’s early estimates of casualties, and the pompous statements about the “black death”, caused the public to lose faith.

On the other hand, academics and physicians, usually those without any specialization in epidemiology and without any scientific publication on the subject, stormed the television screens and radio studios; At first they said the virus was not dangerous, then it was the flu, then it would not come out of China, then it would only affect Italy because it is old. After all this was false, they explained that the virus has weakened, that it has not weakened but it is possible and worthwhile to get a herd vaccine without vaccination, that the Swedes should do what they do, that closures around the world are always conspiracy or stupidity and hospitals in Israel cannot collapse.

And after all this, here’s a bitter truth: apart from countries that have decided with an iron fist to get very little contagion, they are all in a kind of local failure. The question is not the failure, but what its size is, especially in relation to the age of the population. Anyone who says there are easy and quick answers is probably wrong. This winter is difficult for everyone, but Israel’s situation could have been much better today – and the lives of many would have been spared.