The slope of the curve is increasing. It was 1.12 percent between
Dec 26-27, 1.33 percent between Dec 27-28 and has reached 1.76 percent between
Dec 28-29
בדרך למיליון מתחסנים!
— Yuli Edelstein 🇮🇱 יולי אדלשטיין (@YuliEdelstein) December 30, 2020
152,000 מתחסנים נכון לאתמול,
קרוב ל 650,000 בסך הכל.
ככה מנצחים מגפה! pic.twitter.com/bKAWf07NIp
COVID-19 vaccination doses administered per 100 people (ourworldindata.org)
Update January 7. Because of Israel they had to introduce the logarithmic scale
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| Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova |
 |
| George F. Kennan |
Letters to the Editor, Jerusalem Post, Dec 30, 2020
In “Moscow ‘confused’ by Israeli anger at
envoy’s remarks to ‘Post’” (December
27), Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, “All statements
by the Russian ambassador quoted in the publication are in line with Russia’s
well-known position on the Middle East.”
But that does not
necessarily mean that these well-known positions (such as there is “no proof
Hezbollah created the tunnels” crossing into Israel) have any connection to the
truth. After all, the motto of Oceania in George Orwell’s 1984 was “War is
Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.”
It helps to have
read Arthur Koestler, Artur London, Milan Kundera and Orwell, but what comes to
mind when I read what Zakharova said is what George F. Kennan, then counselor
of the US Embassy in Moscow, said in a September 1944 memorandum:
“It would be useful
to the Western world to realize that… the men in the Kremlin have never
abandoned their faith in that program of territorial and political expansion…
which underlay the German-Russian non-aggression pact of 1939.”
MLADEN
ANDRIJASEVIC
Beersheba
It is unfortunate that the Jerusalem Post edited out part of George F.
Kennan’s quote
which shows that this Russia’s policy of territorial and political expansion had always been there and predated
the USSR!
“It would be useful to the
western world to realize that despite all the
vicissitudes by which Russia has been afflicted since August 1939, the
men in the Kremlin have never abandoned their faith in that program of
territorial and political expansion which had once
commended itself so strongly to Tsarist diplomatists, and which underlay
the German-Russian non-aggression pact of 1939.”
15 December, 2020
Since the UK’s first lockdown in March, the government
has had one (perhaps only one) consistent message — protect the NHS, write Alastair McLellan of HSJ and Fiona Godlee of The BMJ.
Now, with the number of hospital patients with
covid-19 again on the
rise, and a third wave almost inevitable, the new year is likely to
see NHS trusts facing a stark choice: be overwhelmed or stop most elective and
non-urgent work. Rather than lifting restrictions over Christmas as currently
planned, the UK should follow the more cautious examples of Germany, Italy and
the Netherlands.
By and large the NHS has coped well with the additional
caseload of covid-19 patients during the autumn. The second wave began to hit
hospitals at the start of September. Government figures report 451 inpatients
with covid-19 in England on 2 September. Over the ensuing 10 weeks, the numbers
rose steadily and then rapidly, peaking at a reported 14,712 inpatients with
covid-19 in England on 23 November.
If the third wave turns out to be of the same order of
magnitude as the second wave, the health service should manage. But this will
be the case only if that wave starts with a broadly similar extra caseload of
covid-19 inpatients as at the beginning of the second wave: around 450.
With current restrictions failing to control the virus,
extrapolation suggests that the actual figure is likely to be more than 40
times higher (see explanation in paragraph below). The planned relaxation of
restrictions over Christmas will boost the numbers further as the NHS also
struggles with the additional demands of winter.
England went into lockdown on 5 November and the number
of inpatients with covid-19 began to fall, down to 12,968 on 5 December. If
this rate of decline had continued, the English NHS would have been on course
for just under 11,000 covid-19 inpatients on 31 December. However, in the past
two weeks, despite most of the country being in tiers 2 or 3, numbers of
inpatients have started to rise again. By 14 December (the latest data
available) covid bed occupancy had climbed back to 15,053.
Unless something happens to change this trajectory,
hospitals in England will have just short of 19,000 covid patients on new
year’s eve. This figure, derived by extrapolating a straight line from December
5 to December 14 through to December 31, would be almost exactly the same as
the 18,974 peak of the first wave on April 12.
The NHS currently has around
95,000 general acute beds. It is operating with around 10 per cent
fewer beds than a year ago as a result of infection prevention and control
measures introduced to try to stop the spread of covid in hospitals.
The cost of inaction
The main impact of a further surge in covid-19 inpatients
is likely to be felt most by those with other conditions. The NHS has learnt
from the first and second waves and has robust plans to rapidly increase
intensive care capacity, including through the Nightingale
hospitals. However, a large influx of covid patients similar or greater
than that seen in the autumn can only be managed if staff and other resources
are diverted from treating non-covid patients.
Having recovered much of their capacity for elective and
non-urgent care during the autumn, NHS trusts in the most pressured regional
health systems are already now having to
cancel almost all such activity because of the resurgent virus.
A significant third wave could wipe out almost all the reductions in waiting
times for elective procedures achieved in the past 20 years. Performance
against the standard which requires the NHS to treat 92 per cent of elective
patents within 18 weeks will have slipped to 12 months by
March next year. The number of patients waiting over a year for
treatment has risen from a hew hundreds to 160,000. This will take years to
recover from, at the cost of much suffering and loss of life.
The coming months are also likely to see the NHS under
intense winter pressures due to seasonal outbreaks of norovirus, increased
admissions of frail older people and the peak of staff absence. The NHS will
also be in the middle of delivering the largest vaccination programme in its
72-year history, via already overstretched general practices and hospitals.
Even if NHS England succeeds in vaccinating all those ‘at
risk’ by Easter, this will not be in time to prevent hospitalisation and death
for many during the next few months. “NHS Track and Trace,” which has almost
nothing to do with the NHS, continues to squander money on failure. So too does
the mass testing of asymptomatic people using lateral flow tests that are not
fit for purpose.
Of particular concern is the impact on staff, many of
whom have already worked through the hardest nine months of their professional
lives. Levels of burnout and sickness absence are likely to exceed those
already experienced.
What should be done
London and many neighbouring counties will enter tier 3
on Wednesday 16 December. However, other areas such as Kent which has been in
tier 3 since 2 December are still seeing strong increases in hospital
admissions. These measures are clearly inadequate.
Ministers are meeting tomorrow (16 December) to review
current restrictions for England. When government devised the current plans to
allow household mixing over Christmas it had assumed the covid-19 demand on the
NHS would be decreasing. But it is not, it is rising, and the emergence of
a new strain of
the virus has introduced further potential jeopardy.
Members of the public can and should mitigate the impact
of the third wave by being as careful as possible over the next few months. But
many will see the lifting of restrictions over Christmas as permission to drop
their guard.
The government was too slow to introduce restrictions in
the spring and again in the autumn. It should now reverse its rash
decision to allow household mixing and instead extend the tiers over the
five-day Christmas period in order to bring numbers down in the advance of a
likely third wave. It should also review and strengthen the tier structure,
which has failed to suppress rates of infection and hospitalisation.
This joint editorial is only the
second in the more than 100 year histories of The BMJ and HSJ. We are publishing it
because we believe the government is about to blunder into another major error
that will cost many lives. If our political leaders fail to take swift and
decisive action, they can no longer claim to be ‘protecting the NHS.’
Alastair McLellan, editor, HSJ
Fiona Godlee, editor in chief, The BMJ
My comment:
Our civilization is apparently completely screwed up!
It defies belief that this can happen in a serious country! The UK government had recently decided to relax the social distancing rules for Christmas but now it seems that it will have horrible consequences on the spread of the virus. Instead of strongly coming out and reversing the previous decision they are being indecisive. More people are going to die but they just can’t make a resolute decision.
But this is a world-wide phenomenon! All around the world people have been behaving completely irrationally, and what is more, hardly anybody has the bluntness to point that out! Less than half of Israelis plan to get vaccinated for COVID-19 – survey. How come people who see this absurdity are not screaming on the top pf their voices? What is going on? This is a global failure of common sense across the world.
Update, December 16, 2020
I cannot understand politicians. Boris Johnson in the
Commons doubles down and refuses to reverse the 5 day Christmas relaxation of
social distancing despite the plea in the medical journals. Keir
Starmer’s criticism was spot on.
Boris Johnson should of all people have remembered Churchill’s blood, toil,
tears and sweat May 13, 1940 speech
instead of giving such a confusing message.
Boris succumbed to reason, finally!
PM announces 'tier 4' Covid curbs and curtails Christmas
mixing in England
“He re-wrote spy fiction in this country and across the world”
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) December 14, 2020
On #BBCBreakfast novelist Robert Harris pays tribute to British espionage writer John le Carré who has died aged 89.https://t.co/b3pIYfn0V7 pic.twitter.com/BK7CevnZU3
The
Times January 15, 2003
Replies to novelist
John le Carre and "U.S. has gone mad!"
From
Mr Mladen Andrijasevic
Sir,
What utter nonsense coming from the best spy novelist of all
time.
George
Smiley must be turning in his grave. So probably is Karla.
Sincerely,
MLADEN
ANDRIJASEVIC,
Meir
Grossman 19/10,
Be'er
Sheva, Israel.
January 15.
 |
| US, Nov 25, Thanksgiving travel |
There is no other way to put it – this pandemic
has exposed the shocking fact that a huge proportion of humankind is dumb. For there is no other way to explain what is
happening around the world:
Israel and the US
“In scenes
recalling Black Friday mobs in the US, thousands crowded together in entrances,
hallways and in stores as they attempted to quench their consumer hunger after
being deprived for close to two months.”
“Americans
couldn’t resist the urge to gather for Thanksgiving, driving only slightly less
than a year ago and largely ignoring the pleas of public health experts, who
begged them to forgo holiday travel to help contain the coronavirus pandemic,
data from roadways and airports shows.”
“Despite the calls
that came from some doctors to ban the open-casket funeral, many mourners who
were not wearing masks or maintaining social distance approached his remains,
with some customarily kissing the cleric's hands or forehead. "
“The statement
refers to a private party in Brussels on November 27. Police stormed the party
in a building housing a gay bar. It has been widely described in Belgian news
reports as a lockdown sex party that allegedly involved men only and included
diplomats and a member of the European Parliament".
“Videos have emerged of thousands of Satmar
Hassidim two weeks ago celebrating the wedding of the grandson of the community’s grand
rabbi in Brooklyn, in what amounts to a massive violation of state COVID-19
regulations.”
As epidemiologist
Michael
Osterholm put it: “I do not know what the disconnect is here.”
It is true that scientists and politicians have
not done enough to educate the population. But what is truly shocking is the behavior of so
many regular people who seem to be completely incapable to understand elementary
scientific concepts and to use their own faculties to comprehend the predicament
we are all in and act accordingly. Psychologists will have a hard task ahead.
 |
Covid-19 |
 |
| Nuclear fission |
Letters
to the Editor, Jerusalem Post, Dec 2, 2020
In “Trying to avoid war” (November 29) Yonah Jeremy Bob writes,
”Paradoxically, the assassination of Iran nuclear program “father” Mohsen
Fakhrizadeh was probably undertaken to avoid war with Iran.”