Weekly Commentary: Bureaucrats Responsible For Many of Israel's COVID-19
Deaths
Dr. Aaron Lerner 7 March 2021

I can't stop thinking of the thousands of Israelis who died because our
Government screwed up and continues to screw up in the handling of COVID-19.

The top two deadly screw ups:

THE SOURCE OF DEATH: Many thousands of Israelis would be alive today if the
people who brought the terrible new strains into our country had been
stopped at the border.

For months we didn't even test the people coming into the country and to
this day we don't hold people at the point of entry until we have test
results. None of the quick tests which Startup Israel has come up and is
mostly pitching overseas have been implemented at the points of entry. But
even setting aside the fast alternatives, with the proper organization and
use of pooling techniques (first test a combined pool of samples, thus only
having to test the individual samples of pools which tested positive) it
would have been possible to require everyone to wait a reasonably short
period of time at the point of entry until they were cleared.

Even today each plane that lands could be bringing someone with a new
dangerous COVID-19 strain with resistance to the current vaccinations but
instead of trying to stop the scourge at our gates we opt to play catch up
as we send the passengers on their way to infect the country.

HUNDREDS ARE DYING BECAUSE THEY AREN'T GETTING A NEW ISRAELI TREATMENT:
Back on February 5th a 100% success rate was announced for phase 1 trials of
a new coronavirus treatment being developed at Tel Aviv's Ichilov Medical
Center. The drug was already in use for cancer treatment so the safety of
the treatment, which is relatively inexpensive, was not in question. The
drug is now continuing through the long testing process.

Are you sitting for this one?

When Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro heard about the treatment he picked
up the phone and asked Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to send over this
miracle treatment.

That's right. Brazil is scrambling to try and save lives with this Israeli
treatment and we are still waiting for double blind testing to prove that a
drug which successfully treated 30 out of 30 patients works!

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

These ongoing foul ups are costing us billions of shekels and thousands of
lives.

We urgently need to get our house in order.
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IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis

Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on Arab-Israeli relations

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