The fight to defeat this new pandemic, which has no vaccine and effective treatment and is a threat to mankind – no less – requires courage, determination, level-headedness, and daring, because in a manner that's hard to fathom and digest, the most effective way to reduce its spread is to shut down the economy, schools, businesses, and all aspects of life to which we are accustomed. In a unique situation such as this, which occurs once every hundred years, very strong steps are needed, ones that require responsible and courageous political and medical leadership.
In waging this fight, it's also imperative to earn the public's trust and convince the country's leaders of the existential need to take the necessary steps, difficult as they are, to mitigate the scope of a pandemic that is "deadly, beguiling and quick" and poses the single greatest threat that mankind has known in decades, as written recently by Prof. Siegal Sadetzki in her resignation letter as head of Public Health Services in the Health Ministry.
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The public's trust, however, has been fractured, because it doesn't understand the reasoning, justification, and necessity behind some of the demands made by the Health Ministry, whose leaders cannot explain why we must shut everything down again when Israel's situation was among the best in the world at the end of the first wave.
In this battle, we must be able to adapt quickly and learn the lessons of our accumulated experience and learn from mistakes – such as hastily reopening all schools and banquet halls, together with Health Minister Yuli Edelstein's miserable decision to temporarily exempt people from wearing protective masks during the harsh heatwave in late May.
It appears, however, that Health Ministry leaders are no longer capable of leading or courageously managing the campaign to quell the second wave of the pandemic, which has already situated Israel among the world's worst in terms of infection rates and heaven forbid, could prove catastrophic from a healthcare perspective.
Health Ministry and government leaders didn't learn the lesson from the dire mistake of haphazardly exiting the initial countrywide lockdown, and early this week the government again hesitated to take the urgent and appropriate steps to reinstate some of the restrictions on the economy and our lives. This despite the Health Ministry's repeated warnings that failure to implement such measures could trigger an uncontrollable and lethal spread of the virus in the second wave. Consequently, the second wave of the coronavirus is already pummeling Israel, mercilessly, with nearly 2,000 more confirmed cases every day. We are also seeing a steady rise in the number of patients in serious condition, along with a growing number of deaths.
Earlier this week, the health minister cautioned that if the government doesn't urgently implement the ministry's recommendations, Israel could reach the point, within days, of having to impose a lengthy and stringent lockdown in an attempt to mitigate the continued spread of the virus. Edelstein was right, but he failed time and again, along with Health Ministry Director-General Prof. Hezi Levi, to persuade the government to impose restrictions when they were absolutely imperative, and now we need additional restrictions that are even more severe – to the point of shutting everything down. And thus, yet again, we will all pay the health, economic, and social price for the Health Ministry and government making the wrong decisions, or not making the right ones in time.
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