Now that outgoing head of the Public Health Service in the Health Ministry Professor Siegal Sadetzki has announced that she is resigning from the "central management role [she] played in stopping the spread of and containing coronavirus in Israel," it can be said that her excellent work, in conjunction with former Health Ministry Director General Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, led Israel to excellent public health and strategy results when measured against the rest of the world.
These results were seen in the decline in the spread of coronavirus and a reduction to the mortality rate, which could have reached dozens per day, as Sadetzki repeatedly warned us.
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We all owe Sadetzki our thanks for, as she wrote in her resignation, putting all her abilities to work for the sake of Israel and its citizens, and "filling a major role on the front line of the battle against coronavirus at a vital time." Even if her work, as she states, exacted a "heavy price – personal, emotional, physical, and in terms of her health."
It's true that the Health Ministry has or will find replacements for Bar Siman-Tov and Sadetzki, but for now, nothing can replace their courage, determination, professionalism, and success in persuading the government and the public about the urgency of the drastic steps they were asked to take in an attempt to contain a virus that is "lethal, sneaky, and fast" and poses the greatest threat to humanity in decades.
When the first wave of the virus subsided, most serious medical experts, as opposed to a small bunch of charlatan doctors and administrators who deceive the public and put it at risk by claiming that "coronavirus is just a flu," and Professor Sadetzki herself repeatedly warned the top officials at the Health Ministry that opening schools and businesses too soon could cause a sharp, dangerous rise in the numbers of confirmed corona cases and symptomatic patients. They also warned against the system deluding itself that corona would "disappear" when summer arrived.
Sadetzki's resignation letter reveals for the first time that despite her warnings, the government took a series of hasty steps that led to a premature, irresponsible, and dangerous relaunch of the economy without sufficient restrictions in place and with nearly no oversight. This happened much faster than in other western countries.
Most of these hasty steps involved the new guard – Health Minister Yuli Edelstein and Director General Hezi Levi, who rushed to give the public the sense that they – unlike their predecessors Yakov Litzman and Siman-Tov – would not make things difficult for them and would allow them to back to the routine they longed for. But it quickly became apparent that their promises were empty, and that the dangerous delusions handed out by Edelstein and Levi could now cost the country, and all of us, quite a lot.
We should all read Sadetzki's resignation letter as a warning about the results of a situation in which experts at the Health Ministry warn against reckless action but are ignored by the top echelon of the ministry and by the rest of the government, causing Israel to lose its world-class results in the battle against coronavirus.
Health Minister Edelstein and ministry Director-General Professor Levi must study the warnings and lessons Sadetzki cites, as well as the criticism she directs at herself about faults in testing and epidemiological research, so that we don't all wind up heading toward a "dangerous place" and repeat the same mistakes.
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