Israel's government must end its coronavirus paralysis

Ynet Israel ^ | July 21 2021 | Nadav Eyal

[CondoleezzaProtege]

With the coronavirus making a massive reappearance in the country, Israel finds itself deep within the realm of uncertainty, doubt and conflicting information.

From the start of the epidemic, there has been no such confusion among the experts themselves, who are torn between the latest data dump from the Health Ministry, data in the field, data from the nation's hospitals, and divergent information coming in from the UK.

On Tuesday, Ynet reported that the team for handling pandemics was given disturbing data on the possibility of a significant reduction in the vaccines' ability to protect from infection and serious illness, and that the director-general of the Health Ministry would convene a special debate on the issue out of deep concern over this new information.

At the same time, however, a series of academics tried unsuccessfully to reproduce the results of the Health Ministry analysis and (thankfully!) produced data showing much higher efficacy for the vaccines.

Are we seeing a decline in vaccine efficacy due to the passage of time from the vaccination date, is it the strength of the Delta strain (whose viral load is hundreds of times higher than previous strains) or is it actually statistical noise?

Furthermore, is this an increase in cases that do not present the risk of an inpatient crisis, serious illness and of course a high number of dead, as in the previous waves?

Analysts are having a hard time deciphering a trend on this, simply because the margin of error is still so large.

One thing is quite clear: in this situation of widespread uncertainty one should not take great risks...

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Not sure I agree with where writer is going with this, but he highlights the fact of all the conflicting information on the part of so-called "experts."

[KC_Lion]

Thank you for posting!