My daughter and her family will all be listed as having recovered from COVID19 today. My granddaughter, who brought the infection home from her Army basic training camp, has already been declared infection free and returned to her base. All of them got through the ordeal? with minimal discomfort. That’s the up side. The down side is what’s happening on a national level. Israel is still a leader in getting people inoculated. My wife and I go for our second shots 2 days from now. But the infection rates are still climbing. So is the death rate. Our overall fatalities due to the virus are still low by world standards. But over 4000 people have died.
The health services are struggling to keep control. They are overworked and many are quite exhausted. The overload factor may have been a major factor in what should have been a preventable death this week. One of the patients who had been put on a ventilator to assist his breathing died. The tube from the ventilator became detached. The device has a warning system for this eventuality, but no one heard the alarm or saw the flashing light until it was too late.
Infection rates have been very high despite the entire country being under lock down for the third time. One reason is obviously that the main international airport has not been shut down. Passengers arriving from overseas are instructed to self-quarantine, or voluntarily go to a designated hotel for 10 days. Many refuse. Others simply go home and ignore the quarantine order. An additional factor helping to spread the disease is the attitude of specific minority groups. In the Arab villages and towns they still celebrate weddings with large gatherings of almost all the extended families from both sides as well as friends. The Health Ministry has guidelines that proscribe such large events, but they are ignored. So, too, the requirements for wearing masks and keeping distances, especially at the weddings. The result, predictably, is an infection rate about 8 times greater than most of the country. Another minority group, one that is even harder hit, is the Jewish Ultra-
Orthodox community, Religious services are supposed to be limited to the minimum 10 men needed to conduct the service, and recommended to take place outdoors. But it’s winter. The synagogues are warmer and can accommodate much larger numbers. Schools are closed, but the ultra orthodox run their own schools. Most of the girls schools are closed, but many of those for boys remain open and there is resistance, sometimes even violent resistance, if the police try to enforce closure. In this community the families are also usually large and live in small apartments in close proximity to one another. End result, as you may have guessed, is an infection rate about 12 times higher than the national average.
There is one more factor that obviously is involved in all this, Politics. In a bit more than two months Israelis will go to the polls to elect a new government. The impact of current decisions (based on health considerations) upon the voter is obviously on the minds of the cabinet ministers who approve various measures related to the pandemic. There are regular political demonstrations against some figures in government. The Prime Minister gets the lion’s share of this attention. Measures pertaining to school and economic closures have been announced, and repealed, and announced again, The cycle repeats itself over and over as each special interest group displays displeasure at some aspect of the lock down. Just to make matters worse, the current cabinet includes 36 ministers. That’s a result of coalition considerations needed to give a parliamentary majority. Anyone who ever worked with a committee knows that a body this large doesn’t really make any critical decisions. Our government is no different. The one opinion that matters is that of the Prime Minister. H’s been involved in a corruption trial that keeps him from really focusing on anything else from before the pandemic struck. Now, he’s more interested in reelection, and holding his position, (and staying out of prison) than he is in the welfare of Israeli citizens.
Hopefully, the combination of CORONA vaccine and new elections will remove the tarnish and give us all a brighter future.
Wetherhorn 