The Netanyahu Pandemic-- Israel Becomes The World's First Country To Shut Down Again

On Thursday, Israel reported 4,429 new cases of COVID-19 in their Netanyahu Pandemic. On Friday it was another 3,038 cases and yesterday 3,961 more, bring the country's total to a horrifying 152,525. Why "horrifying?" Israel only has 9.2 million people. That number is very high for a small country and can be better understood when you compare Israel to five of the other countries that had handled the first wave relatively well by shutting down and then reopened:

• Israel- 16,583 cases per million residents
• Spain- 12,334 cases per million residents
• France- 5,726 cases per million residents
• U.K.- 5,374 cases per million residents
• Netherlands- 4,726 cases per million residents
• Italy- 4,737 cases per million residents
• Germany- 3,107 cases per million residents

Instead, Israel is rapidly catching up with the 10 U.S. states that have also botched their reopening worse than any advanced societies and-- whether they acknowledge it or not-- are headed towards shutting down again... probably after the election:

• Louisiana- 33,595 cases per million residents
• Florida- 30,803 cases per million residents
• Mississippi- 30,113 cases per million residents
• Alabama- 28,073 cases per million residents
• Georgia- 27,587 cases per million residents
• South Carolina- 25,245 cases per million residents
• Tennessee- 25,024 cases per million residents
• Texas- 23,764 cases per million residents
• Nevada- 23,772  cases per million residents
• Iowa- 23,412  cases per million residents

Like my grandmother-- an old school zionist-- and evangelicals-- no school zionists-- my pal Roland assumed Israel would be the first nation in the world to develop a vaccine. Israel assumed likewise and blared it widely. Instead this was the magic headline in yesterday's Times of London: Israel becomes first nation to announce a second coronavirus lockdown. Reporting from Jerusalem, Anshel Pfeffer, wrote that "Israel is passing milestones no other nation wants to reach, after repeated missteps by Binyamin Netanyahu’s government. Blighted by one of the highest levels of coronavirus infection, with more than 4,000 new cases daily, it is about to become the first country to go back into national lockdown." No one wants to say it, of course, but Israel has the burden of a large, extremely primitive and entirely above-the-law Hasidic population that is largely responsible for the Netanyahu Pandemic.

The decision taken by the cabinet in Jerusalem on Thursday to start a lockdown next Friday, on the eve of the Jewish new year, led to claims of political considerations trumping public health.

Details of the new lockdown have still to be finalised but are likely to include a ban on moving more than 500 metres from home, and limits on gatherings of ten people indoors and 20 outdoors. Schools will shut and teachers will switch to giving lessons online.

For a week Israel has had the highest new infection rate per person, according to data from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. The daily rate continues to rise and yesterday 4,429 new cases were recorded.

Despite this, mortality remains low, with 1,077 deaths since the pandemic began. Experts believe that the low toll is because Israel’s population has a young median age.

The health ministry says that there are 486 serious cases, some way off the “red line” of 800, the limit of Israeli hospitals’ capacity. However, these are not evenly spread. “We’ve long ago reached the red line,” said Professor Dror Mevorach, of Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem. “People are behaving without understanding the seriousness of the situation and the leadership isn’t giving any example. We’re in a slow collapse.”

In May Israel ended its first lockdown with daily new infections in single figures but it is clear that the recovery was poorly planned and hastily executed. Pressure from businesses led to an early return to schools and renewed spread of the virus. The government, meanwhile, failed to set up an efficient system to flag new outbreaks. This is still the case. Last month it gave the responsibility for contact-tracing to the military, which said this week that the system would not be fully operational until November.

[I bolded a few sentences because they apply equally to Trumpland.]

About two thirds of the infections are in the Arab-Israeli and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, which together account for almost a third of the 8.8 million-strong population. Experts attribute the levels of infection to both groups’ insistence, despite restrictions, on holding weddings with as many as 1,000 guests, and the resumption of study three weeks ago in the ultra-Orthodox seminaries.

Last week the cabinet voted in favour of localised lockdowns, which would have included about 30 “red” towns and neighbourhoods, all either ultra-Orthodox or Arab. However, ultra-Orthodox parties are key members of Mr Netanyahu’s coalition and after an outcry that they were being “singled out” the lockdown was rescinded on Sunday in favour of nightly curfews, which were judged ineffective by experts.

“Complete madness,” Yair Golan, a left-wing opposition leader, tweeted. “Where is the logic in a full lockdown on towns with barely any infections?” He accused the prime minister of deciding on a national lockdown to avoid angering his political partners.

The latest polling indicates that Netanyahu's political handling of the pandemic has talked his approval. 65% of Israelis disapprove of the way he's doing his job. Friday, the UN General Assembly approved a coronavirus resolution opposed by just 4 fascist-oriented countries: Trumpland and Israel voting NO and Hungary and Ukraine abstaining. The resolution also called on all UN member states "to enable all countries to have unhindered timely access to quality, safe, efficacious and affordable diagnosis, therapeutics, medicines and vaccines … as well as equipment for the COVID-19 response" and called for "intensified international cooperation and solidarity to contain, mitigate and overcome the pandemic and its consequences." It passed 169-2.