The decision to force all travelers from abroad to spend two weeks in a COVID hotel facility is not bizarre – it is nothing less than insane. It is yet another indication of how terribly the COVID problem is being handled. Decisions like these strike blow after blow at the basic trust that is supposed to exist between citizens and their state. Decisions like these cause the public to become lax in following regulations.
When the first wave broke out, the government sent tens of thousands of citizens arriving from abroad into isolation without checking who among them had contracted COVID. Even then, the national economy suffered a serious hit. There was no reason to send nearly 100,000 people into self-isolation at home without testing them.
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But even if we assume that the information at the time about the virus and how to handle it was so vague that there were not a lot of choices, how can we explain that 10 months later – when vaccines are here – thousands are being taken to forced self-isolation, like criminals? And unlike criminals, travelers returning home have no official option for legal defense before being sent to "jail."
If the government were to decide that due to concern about the new mutation (and incidentally, there is no proof it is more dangerous), travelers would be assigned to two days in hotel facilities and while there undergo two tests, and after receiving two negative results could go home, the decision might make a little more sense. But sending them to COVID hotels for such a long time makes no medical sense. There is no justification for it on medical grounds, not to mention the shocking waste of public money it entails. Taking away citizens' freedoms can be justified only in emergency situations. If decision-makers were convinced that this is an emergency, they wouldn't wait until Wednesday afternoon to make the final decision on a lockdown.
It has been two weeks since the prime minister went to Ben-Gurion International Airport to receive the first shipment of vaccines, and only two days ago medical staff began getting their first jabs. The operation is being handled as if someone has all the time in the world. Shipments to hospitals and vaccination centers are slow. So while on one hand the government is demanding a lockdown, on the other, it takes nearly two weeks from the time the vaccines arrive in Israel until vaccinations can get underway?
The first wave was notable for the forms doctors had to fill out for people to get tested for COVID. And now, we have the same foolishness in a different form. Medical teams are ready and willing to vaccinate tens of thousands per day, but it appears as if the people in charge are taking their time. Every shipment, every logistical arrangement, requires approval as if it were a change to the zoning laws.
The people making decisions about the COVID crisis in Israel are not giving the public a single reason to trust them. Every decision is stranger than the last one, even without the underlying difficulty in making decisions at all. A Turkish bazaar runs more professionally. It appears as if some people are demanding the broadest possible restrictions just so they can keep partial ones in place.
It is time for the decision makers to do more than photograph people being vaccinated. They need to start listening to the people's terrible distress. They should worry less about being photogenic and more about being sympathetic. They should be more professional and less political. Let them make a new mistake every day, as long as they stop repeating the same mistakes day after day.
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