Sunday, December 19, 2021

Has Israel gone overboard fighting COVID19? No, it has not!

 



Letters to the Editor, Jerusalem Post, December 20, 2021

Gone overboard?

Regarding “Has Israel gone overboard fighting COVID-19?” (editorial, December 17), no, it has not! It seems Jerusalem Post staff cannot grasp the concept of exponential growth and what it means that Omicron in the UK has an R between 3 and 5 compared to Delta’s R, which is between 1.1 and 1.2.

Hospitalization lags two to three weeks after infection so we do not know yet the actual severity of Omicron.

But even if Omicron were less severe than Delta, Omicron’s transmissibility is much higher than Delta’s. Dr. Eric Topol described the situation as such: “A key point here is that high transmissibility, which we are clearly seeing, will get a lot more people infected. Even if a smaller fraction do get severe illness, that’s still a lot more people very sick. That also means more Long COVID, too, which can occur with mild cases and can be quite disabling.”

The proof that Israel has not gone overboard is the story in the Post itself: “One family likely causes mass Omicron outbreak” (December 19).

 

MLADEN ANDRIJASEVIC

Beersheba