In the Ministry of Health, in hospitals, in the health funds and in the media, few people treat deceased patients and tell their stories. • This is not only an unforgivable moral sin and a serious injury in the fight against the plague, but no less serious - a serious injury in the fight against the epidemic.
In the past month, between 4 and 14 people have died from corona every day
Photo:
Yossi Zeliger - Archive
It was conceivable that most of the speakers of the public hospitals in the country were willing to assist a journalist who merely seeks to interview families whose loved ones have recently died from the corona. But my experience yesterday with some hospital spokespersons was dismal, with some spokespersons saying that they only had contact with families from the first wave of the Corona at all, others were really surprised at all at the request itself, and some evaded in some other way or faded away and did not respond.
However, this is not at all an issue related to hospital spokespersons, but a much deeper problem that is now prevalent in the Ministry of Health, hospitals, health funds and the media itself towards the dead in the second wave of the Corona. In stark contrast to the first wave, hospitals rarely report the dead from the corona to the media, the Ministry of Health itself hides the death toll in its reports, the heads of the Ministry of Health rarely, if ever, refer to the dead in messages and interviews, while the media itself, including the undersigned, reports minor Very much on the death toll and hardly reports the story of the lives and deaths of the victims of the corona, as it was proper and right to do.
Photo: GPO
And all this despite the fact that the data show that in the last month between 4 and 14 people die from corona every day, and in July alone 179 deaths were added to the count of almost 500 dead since the beginning of the plague. And all this against the background of the study of the Hebrew University published yesterday, which showed that although there is a very positive line in the slowdown and curbing of the second corona wave, but also a gloomy forecast, according to which another 200 corona patients in Israel may die in the coming month.
The most extreme and tangible expression of public disregard for patients dying from corona could be seen at the press conference on Tuesday this week, when Channel 20 News reporter Hillel Bitton Rosen boldly asked Prof. Roni Gamzo, the new Corona supervisor: "There is a sense that something central is missing in your presentation at the party "The journalists and the discourse on the deceased, when only 8 patients died this morning, and the discourse in Israel, the state of the Jewish people, is how we return performances and restaurants as quickly as possible, and all the discourse about the loss of human life is missing. Could it be that we are losing something here?"
Prof. Gamzo replied: "I think the opposite, we talk a lot about being infected, sick writers and forgetting to count the effects of all this on society and the economy. I want it more up front." Gamzo is right of course that in his new role better management of the fight against the corona was intended to reduce the severe economic and social harm, but he was in no way allowed to give a feeling as if he or the Ministry of Health had alienation from the corona, and that feeling came hard from his answer.
• Prof. Gamzo: "There will be no irrational restrictions - but a new contract with the public is needed"
Gamzo avoided the difficult questions
• Gamzo's "traffic light" model: powers will be transferred to the authorities
This is not only a very difficult moral and value problem and intensifying public and media alienation towards the critically ill and dead from Corona, but it is also a severe blindness to one of the main bases of any Corona epidemic crisis, based on the fear of destructive spread of a virus. And has already caused the deaths of tens of thousands in several countries and the collapse of hospitals.
The purpose of the restrictions and closures is to reduce the spread of the plague, the rise in the number of critically ill and dead patients. If we stop counting and seeing the hard and dead patients, and if the public discourse and the heads of the Ministry of Health alienate them - not only is this an unforgivable moral sin, but no less serious - it is a serious blow to the fight against the plague and chances of eradicating it.
