The silence of Health Minister Edelstein and the management of his office in front of thousands of dead is terrible and unforgivable.
Every morning for the past few weeks, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein's spokesman is issuing a statement to the public, which boasts, and rightly so, of a successful global-scale corona vaccine operation.
The operation expanded: the youth began to get vaccinated against Corona, today // Photo: Paz Bar
This operation is the main means, even if not the only one, to try and deal successfully with the cunning deadly plague, which has already caused more than 4,300 victims in Israel, thousands of critically ill, and economic and social harm to millions of citizens.
All those thousands of corona victims, including the dozens who die every day from the plague, the very heavy loads in the corona wards, which severely impair patients' chances of recovery, and the grievous complaints of doctors, administrators and family members about the conduct of the Ministry of Health and hospitals.
And this public silence of Edelstein and the management of the Ministry of Health in front of the dozens of dead a day and the thousands of new patients is terrible and unforgivable.
Edelstein was expected to issue his daily message daily from another Corona ward where the bloody battle in the plague was taking place.
Simultaneously with the vaccination campaign that the Ministry of Health is once again boasting about (until last night, 2.5 million Israelis were vaccinated in the first dose and close to one million Israelis in the second dose), the third wave of the epidemic in Israel, and this time, even more than the previous waves. Very difficult in hospitals.
The Ministry of Health estimates that the British mutation, which increased the infections and probably also the very serious illness, is one of the main reasons for the persistence of the very severe and deadly third wave in Israel, as well as in many countries around the world, including the US, UK, Germany and more.
Israel is a leader in vaccinating the population, but most doctors estimate that it will be a long time - months and perhaps much longer - until we achieve a real and real effect of "herd vaccination", in which most of the population is vaccinated and thus provides very significant protection against infections and serious illness.
It should be remembered that so far almost two million children and adolescents up to the age of 16 cannot be vaccinated (at present there are no findings on studies at these ages), and there are still population groups who are in no hurry to be vaccinated.
This is noticeable among some of the Israeli Arabs, the ultra-Orthodox, and even some of the medical and nursing staff, who were expected to be 100% vaccinated.
Until then, it is imperative and obligatory to continue to maintain corona restrictions and also to operate ongoing closures to save hundreds and thousands of Israelis from the serious illness and death.
According to the daily numbers of infections, morbidity and mortality in Israel, the current closure must not end this coming Saturday evening, even if there is, again, political pressure, some populist and irresponsible on the part of government ministers, to leave the closure and return quickly to routine no matter what the price in human life.
There are many countries, advanced and enlightened, which, given the current epidemic data in Israel, would continue in a tight quarantine for many more weeks, and in any case do not dare to end it with the current data.
In the current closure, the Ministry of Health management does not intentionally openly place signs to the public on the severity of the situation (for example, what exactly are the occupancies / loads in hospitals that require closure or tightening), and more importantly - the ministry deliberately refrains from setting concrete numerical goals New per day, numbers of seriously ill patients, death numbers and more) that will allow the exit from the quarantine.
In the meantime, hopefully the quarantine will not end one day before there is a sharp, sustained and consistent decline in the outbreak of the plague, so that we can already stop counting the new dead from Corona every day.