The steep rise in the number of those infected in Corona has brought with it bad news, but also good news.
The first bad news is that the number of infections will continue to rise.
At the current rate of infection, it doubles almost every ten days, which means that in less than two weeks we will have about 10,000 infected each day in the Delta strain.
The second bad news is that by all accounts, about 50 percent of vaccines have been eroded, and their effectiveness has diminished.
If in Israel about 5.5 million citizens were vaccinated, then between 2.5 and 3 million of them were eroded, and those who were vaccinated have only partial (if any) effectiveness against the current variant of the corona.
The first good news is that almost 80 percent of the severe patients in the current strain are 60-plus years old.
This means that if most of this population is vaccinated in the near future (to date, about 700,000 out of 1.2 million people in this age group have been vaccinated), broad immunity will accumulate again, resulting in an increase in severe morbidity and consequent mortality.
The second good news is that preliminary studies show that the third vaccine significantly jumps the amount of antibodies in the body.
This is a familiar phenomenon: you also get the first vaccine against measles, then the second vaccine after a month, and the third vaccine - designed to determine the body's immune system - after six months.
Researchers are now preoccupied with whether the corona will behave the same;
If the third vaccine is enough to determine the immune system in the body for a long period of time and maybe forever, or because of the change in the virus we will need to get boosters with unclear frequency to deal with it.
The existential threat is back
Israel's main problem is that it currently has no one to learn from. There is no other reference group in the world that parallels us, in terms of population size, amount of vaccines and their effectiveness. We are the reference group of the world in dealing with the Delta virus. To a large extent, the steps that will be taken here (and those that are not), and their effectiveness, will affect the way other countries deal with the virus.
The UK is perhaps the model closest to us. There are differences, of course: in the size, and also in the nature of the vaccines (in Israel only Pfizer vaccines were given; in the UK - vaccines of various types, their effectiveness varies), but the combination of a huge effort by the government to encourage the population to get vaccinated, Hopes that here too it will be possible to avoid drastic measures and curb the current wave, or at least reduce it.
It depends, as mentioned, first of all on the amount of vaccinated.
In the UK today there are about 70-60 per cent of the population who are either vaccinated or recovering.
Israel was also there, but the erosion of vaccines against the Delta strain skyrocketed the morbidity.
The claims of vaccine opponents do not hold water;
All studies and indices show that those who are not vaccinated are protected less, much less, compared to those who are vaccinated.
Worse, the delta strain causes more severe morbidity among the non-vaccinated compared to previous corona variants.
Because it has included its own replication mechanisms to deal with the antibodies, its symptoms are more severe in unvaccinated patients.
Add to that the fact that non-vaccinated are more contagious, and consequently more contagious, it is really difficult to understand the current wave of vaccine resistance, which like its predecessors literally saves lives.
The steep rise in morbidity is producing, as always, immense pressure on decision-makers to take drastic measures. The word "closure" was thrown into the air this week in the media so often that it had a practical effect: people did not want to take a risk, and canceled invitations to vacations, shows, weddings. The economic impact of this is already being felt, and will probably increase. There are whole branches that have just emerged from the corona, and have already found themselves in an existential threat again. Children’s plays, for example, will be difficult to exist once every child has to bring in a negative test; Many of the shows have already been canceled. The world of tourism has also suffered a fatal blow from the moment almost the entire world was declared a debtor in isolation back to Israel; Masses of passengers have canceled flights, and travel agents are once again required to return money and accumulate losses.
The government would do well to give answers to this before the blow, and not after it.
There is quite a bit of logic in her claim that one should not run for a fourth closure.
Even most experts, including outsiders, are not convinced that this move is inevitable.
The hope is that with the increase in the volume of vaccines among the adult population - and its expansion to younger populations - the dimensions of infection and, implicitly, the dimensions of severe morbidity will decrease, and it will be possible to live alongside the virus again.
In any case, the effectiveness of the closures is waning from time to time, and the fear is that Israelis will find it difficult to live with another closure and many will not obey it.
Therefore other solutions are now being sought such as expanding the use of speed tests, even if their effectiveness is low compared to the pen tests.
In previous waves of the corona the Ministry of Health vehemently opposed the speed tests.
He now realized (belatedly, but better late than never), that partial efficiency was preferable to ignorance.
As with everything in Corona, UK speed testing is the world leader;
A model built at Oxford University stated that a rapid test performed once every two days gives a broad enough indication that it is possible to determine the extent of outbreaks of the disease.
The following variant
The use of a wider basket of solutions than automatic closure is also warranted in the face of the future. No one knows what the plague is. Will it fade sometime soon, or will it accompany us for many years to come. The Center for Information and Knowledge of the Armed Forces monitors the conduct of the virus around the world, and the confrontation of the various countries against it. And in a large part of Europe) about which it is still too early to determine, and there are countries (Africa) that simply do not have sufficient information about what is happening in them.
This follow-up also includes a constant search for the next variant - the epsilon.
There are several candidates for this (especially in Central America and some US states), but the problem is that there is not enough continuous and reliable information. If, God forbid, a new strain appears, it will also challenge the third batch.
It also requires public cooperation, which requires more enforcement and deterrence.
In the coming days, the Home Front Command will return to extensive activity in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.
It is doubtful if we will see soldiers on the streets like in the first wave, but the army is doing well to get under the stretcher.
Any available force will be effective in expanding the circle of vaccinators and subjects;
Only in this way will the morbidity be stopped, and perhaps the next closure will also be avoided.