Bloomberg reported on Friday that the virus is still killing more people in the United States than guns, cars and the flu combined. Also, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that while vaccines remain effective against the Delta variant, their protective ability is weaker than health officials had hoped.
“We do not know exactly to what degree the vaccine helps, but it is significantly less,” he said. “Whoever hoped that the vaccines alone would solve the problem, they are not. What is necessary is a strategy that brings as many vaccines as possible on the one hand and, on the other, also understands the limits of the vaccines.”
The prime minister laid out the steps necessary for slowing the spread of the Delta variant in Israel on Wednesday: masks in closed spaces, vaccination and social distancing.
“From this moment on, everyone is wearing masks indoors,” Bennett said during a press conference. “However primitive they may seem, they are the best protection against the Delta variant.”
Bennett accused those who do not put on their masks in closed spaces of being lazy.
“It’s not just you hurting yourself, you are hurting everyone,” he said.
While the Pfizer vaccine appears less effective at stopping the spread of the Delta variant, it continues to stop serious disease.
The Health Ministry reported Saturday that more than 1,000 new cases were diagnosed the day before, the highest number since March. But the number of serious cases only rose slightly to 58. That’s because, according to Prof. Eran Segal, a computational biologist for the Weizmann Institute of Science, the percentage of cases that turn critically ill is now at 1.6%, compared to 4% at a similar stage in the third wave when there were no vaccines.
A separate Israeli study published this month found that during the third wave, older individuals with many underlying medical conditions and immunosuppression were the ones most likely to contract coronavirus and develop a severe case of COVID-19 even after being fully vaccinated. Although too early to be sure, scientists believe the same will hold true with the Delta variant.
But there are still one-and-a-half million Israelis who are eligible to be vaccinated and have chosen not to be inoculated.
Social distancing mostly applies to mass, “super-spreading” events.
On June 1, Israel lifted all of its coronavirus restrictions, including any rules defined by the Green Pass or Purple Ribbon that limited gatherings and kept unvaccinated people outside of large events unless they presented a recent negative coronavirus test result.
Within a few weeks of lifting the rules and subsequently the indoor masking mandate, the daily infection rate climbed.
On June 1, there were only 35 new cases. On July 1 that number reached 297, and as of Friday 1,118. In previous waves, studies showed that a small percentage of infected people accounted for the majority of coronavirus spread.
After Bennett delivered his speech, he was mocked by the opposition Likud Party for its lack of originality.
“Bennett said today what [Benjamin] Netanyahu said a year-and-a-half ago,” the Likud said in a statement. “What changed is that Bennett received a state from Netanyahu that came back to life and came out of coronavirus, and today, under his authority, [coronavirus] has returned to Israel.”
Videos began being disseminated of the former prime minister showing the public how to use a tissue during prime time or how to affix their masks over their noses and mouths effectively.
Netanyahu’s triangle of protection was masks, social distancing and personal hygiene, a mantra he recited over and over again in nearly every press conference he delivered. In this way, Bennett’s speech was unoriginal.
Vaccines, of course, did not come to Israel until toward the end of Netanyahu’s term.
Netanyahu promised Israelis that the vaccines meant the end of the pandemic for the Jewish state, leading the country into a dangerous level of complacency.
But health officials always knew two things:
First, each time a virus replicates in a cell it has a chance of mutating. Rapidly spreading viruses replicate more and hence are more likely to mutate, eventually developing variants of concern – like the Delta variant.
Second, the pandemic “will not be over anywhere until it’s over everywhere,” as World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has repeated many times. As such, unless Israel chooses to completely shut down Ben-Gurion Airport, variants can be expected to enter the country.
Health and government officials can battle over which additional restrictions to implement and how strict they should be – and enforcing COVID-19 rules could certainly help keep the country safe.
But there is no substitute for masks, social distancing and good hygiene. While certainly not foolproof, these basic principles are understood worldwide to save lives.
On Sunday, the Jewish people will commemorate Tisha Be’Av – the Ninth Day of the Hebrew month of Av – the day on which the Temple was destroyed twice due to baseless hatred.
The late Elie Wiesel said that “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
When it comes to COVID-19, indifference is hate. Because in the end, the virus is transmitted from person to person.
And love is following the basic rules to keep our grandparents alive and our economy open and thriving.