In recent days, the Ministry of Health has presented optimistic preliminary data of a slowdown and some containment in the number of patients who are difficult and newly verified daily in Corona.
There are already first signs that the third vaccine - which has already been received by more than a million Israelis - is succeeding in curbing serious illness among those aged 60 and over.
According to these data, the third vaccine in Israel, which the whole world looks at as a precedent, is apparently succeeding in saving lives and starting to curb the intensification of the epidemic.
However, these are only preliminary data, and when it comes to a deceptive, cruel and deadly epidemic like the corona, and a fourth wave that struck Israel with thousands of verified daily and dozens of seriously ill and victims - it is too early to rejoice and declare a halt.
We must remember how each time again, after every outbreak and closure that followed in the last year and a half, the government and we hoped and thought we had succeeded in defeating the plague.
But this plague has repeatedly caused neglect of all restrictions, unpreparedness of the health care system and a very severe recurrence of the plague with another wave.
Citizen vaccinated with the third vaccine // Photo: Gideon-Markowitz,
One must also remember how, again, just a few weeks ago at the beginning of the fourth wave, the government inexcusably repeated arrogance and complacency, with all possible mistakes, and refused to take all the actions and restrictions that senior health officials urgently demanded.
This refusal is already costing us hundreds of new Israeli victims of the plague.
It is also important to remember how some 600 seriously ill patients, some of them respirators and in critical condition, are already hospitalized in the already crowded hospitals.
In some places they do not even receive reasonable care under the heavy burden on the medical staff, under poor management of some of the hospitals and of the Ministry of Health.
And this is even before the directors of hospitals in the country dare to say that they have reached "insufficiency", ie a situation where the treatment of corona patients is in a difficult situation and all patients are difficult, it is already less explanatory (although in closed conversations some admit it).
The unvaccinated default
If indeed, as we all hope, the optimistic data will materialize and begin a real decline and steady decline in the outbreak of the fourth wave, it will be important to warn and shout again: all arrogance and dangerous arrogance The plague of the last year and a half.
This arrogance, in which time and time again the most senior officials in the Ministry of Health, hospital administrators and journalists are inconceivably sinned, always brings us closer to the next wave of Corona, which we will also reach unprepared.
Barrier Enforcement Checkpoint in Jerusalem // Photo: Oren Ben Hakon,
Vaccination campaigns in Israel, including the current one of the third vaccine, are considered very successful on a global scale.
But at the same time, the Ministry of Health and the four health funds have so far failed to convince about a million Israelis that they have not been vaccinated even in the first and second dose to do so.
The failure began even before the start of the fourth wave, when the scandalous atmosphere in the Ministry of Health and the HMOs was that the corona disappeared from Israel and will not return, so the effort to vaccinate all the unvaccinated was almost completely stopped, and almost completely abandoned. Another corona.
Israel is still struggling in the very difficult fourth wave, and so far we have reached almost a million verified and almost 6,800 deceased.
But the gaze must be not only on the current wave, but on the next waves, which, according to forecasts, could hit the world for many years to come.
That is why one should remember not to treat as an absolute victory the whole end of the corona wave and not to be indifferent at the beginning of each wave as if it will pass by itself.
In the meantime, it is necessary to make a national effort to convince the million Israelis who have not been vaccinated to do so, to continue with the obligation of restrictions and masks both in the slight outbreak of the epidemic and in the schools, and to strengthen the hospitals.