Letters to the Editor , Jerusalem Post, May 11, 2020
Regarding
“Israel’s coronavirus is on
the decline: Lockdown, Mother Nature or math?”(May 6),
“Government action had nothing to do with the country’s success in the battle
against the novel coronavirus, according to MK Ofer Shelah (Yesh Atid-Telem).”
The
assertion by MK Ofer Shelah (Yesh Atid-Telem) that “government action had
nothing to do with the country’s success in the battle against the novel
coronavirus” is sheer nonsense.
Israel
has 16,314 cases and 238 deaths with the population of 9.2 million, so it has
27 deaths per million population which is ten times less than Sweden has per million.
I
just cannot imagine that Israel could tolerate 2,380 deaths, which would
approach the number of deaths in the Yom Kippur war.
How
to explain such numbers? Israel imposed strict restrictions early on and a
lockdown at the very beginning of the exponential curve. I believe that it
helped that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has Master of Science degree from
MIT, whereas Boris Johnson studied humanities at Oxford and Trump has a
bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton school – so Netanyahu was much
more receptive to the scientists’ advice.
In
addition, the health care providers (Maccabi for instance) monitors remotely
every mildly infected person three times a day.
MLADEN
ANDRIJASEVIC
Beersheba
Beersheba
