Posted on 03/18/2020 3:11:30 AM PDT by gattaca
‘People think this virus is going to attack them all, and then they’re all going to die,’ says Prof. Jihad Bishara. ‘Not at all. In fact, most of those infected won’t even know it’A leading Israeli virologist on Sunday urged world leaders to calm their citizens about the coronavirus pandemic, saying people were being whipped into unnecessary panic.
Prof. Jihad Bishara, the director of the Infectious Disease Unit at Petah Tikva’s Beilinson Hospital, said that some of the steps being taken in Israel and abroad were very important, but the virus is not airborne, most people who are infected will recover without even knowing they were sick, the at-risk groups are now known, and the global panic is unnecessary and exaggerated.
“I’ve been in this business for 30 years,” Bishara said in a Channel 12 interview. “I’ve been through MERS, SARS, Ebola, the first Gulf war and the second, and I don’t recall anything like this. There’s unnecessary, exaggerated panic. We have to calm people down.
Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top storiesFREE SIGN UP “People are thinking that there’s a kind of virus, it’s in the air, it’s going to attack every one of us, and whoever is attacked is going to die,” he said.
“That’s not the way it is at all. It’s not in the air. Not everyone [who is infected] dies; most of them will get better and won’t even know they were sick, or will have a bit of mucus.”
But in Israel and around the world, “everybody is whipping everybody else up into panic — the leaders, via the media, and the wider public — who then in turn start to stress out the leaders. We’ve entered some kind of vicious cycle.”
Prof. Jihad Bishara (Courtesy) He urged the public to internalize that “we’re talking about a virus that is not airborne. Infection is via droplet transmission… Only if you are close to someone who has the virus, and you get the saliva when he sneezes or coughs, can you get ill. And if you don’t then maintain personal hygiene,” primarily by washing hands.
He said the virus did not appear to be “too intelligent” — unlike flu, “which is very intelligent, it changes, adapts, and it infects people via their airway passages.”
Bishara said some of the harsh steps taken in Israel — which has essentially closed its borders, limited gatherings to no more than 10 people, closed all educational facilities, and shut down malls, restaurants and places of entertainment and culture — were motivated by the leaders’ acknowledged awareness that the Israeli health system will buckle under any further strain.
Home quarantine has been ordered for “everyone who has passed by someone who may have been infected by someone else,” he protested, “because they know that our health system cannot withstand coming under any more strain, because we are perennially stretched to the limit.”
Referring to Italy’s national lockdown, he said that “quarantine is an effective precaution, but there has to be temperate use. You can shut down a whole country, but there are other means.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) with Health Minister Yaakov Litzman (right) and Health Ministry General Manager Moshe Bar Siman-Tov at a press conference about the coronavirus, at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem on March 11, 2020. Netanyahu is explaining how the coronavirus can spread from a sneeze. (Flash90) At this stage, he said, “we know how the virus behaves, how it spreads, and which groups are in danger. We know now that his virus is primarily dangerous to old people, and to people with a history of chronic disease, and those who are immunocompromised.”
Appealing to Israeli leaders “who are appearing every night at 8 p.m. to announce all kinds of steps, some of them very important,” he said, they should “first and foremost calm people down.”
From a guy by the name of “Jihad “....
Also, last Border Patrol agents apprehended over 850,000 illegal aliens at America’s southern border and hundreds of those caught illegally entering the country last year came from parts of Africa known to be heavily hit by the Ebola disease.
His last name in Arab Christian means “good news” so that is ironic.
From the start of this I believed two things, 1) this virus is real and it isn’t the flu, and 2) our political class, especially at the state & local level, will botch the handling of this in an unrepresented and destructive way. Both items aren’t mutually exclusive.
He is exactly right. The media is spreading panic deliberately and with malice.
And the sheep will gobble it up and run in circles screeching the sky is falling.
I prefer doctors who aren’t named “Jihad”
What a lying f*ck. The Chinese have studies that the virus is airborne; including an article from I think back in JANUARY where a doctor who hadn’t been in Wuhan, caught it from a doctor who had been, by sitting at a table with him during a medical conference. IIRC, there was also the case where people rode on a bus half an hour after an infected person had got off the bus, who caught it.
That is one of the funniest posts I have seen in a long time.
I am still laughing.
Bravo montag.
I live in a town of 600 people in a county that has less than 6,000 people in it.
People are driving from large cities to smaller towns and buying up many of the basic food items in the local grocery store a good one, locally owned. It is insane. And when the locals see the shelves of the store empty, they panic.
It is nuts.
If the local food store is out of bread, I can bake that and compensate.
When outsiders come in and buy all the toilet paper? I cannot make it. There are other options, but I don't want to go there.
I hate what the media is doing to this, THEY are the ones that are creating this chaos. ComDem Insanity projected by the media and it threatens the November elections.
Yes, it is intentional. They will collapse the nation if that is what it takes to get President Trump out of office.
No, that is not an exaggeration.
‘Not at all. In fact, most of those infected won’t even know it’
tell that to the idiot virtue signaling governors shutting down the states...
Although I find it astonishing that I am willing to cut the political leadership a small bit of slack because they were almost forced to “do something” by circumstances out of their control.
I am convinced that these government officials originally intended to implement reasonable, innocuous measures to deal with this outbreak. It was the large-scale cancellation of major sports events that triggered the panic.
‘What a lying f*ck.’
his point, which is perfectly reasonable, is that the authorities responses have been completely and illogically driven by panic...I take from your post you are okay with taking our economy down to its skeletal remains...
I hate what the media is doing to this, THEY are the ones that are creating this chaos.
...
Exactly. They needed a catastrophe they could blame on Trump.
What the author speaks of as “airborne” is not what you think it is.
It is droplets that convey it. (sneezing and by contact with it)
Airborne infection means if you simply walk through a room that a carrier went through, you will get the illness.
What the media is doing is intentional. They want chaos. They will do anything to take President Trump out. Even destroy the nation, which is what many of them actually want.
Too late....
Correct.
I pray that in November it will be such a landslide for President Trump that the power of the media is destroyed.(they are no longer the Press, but have become Press-titutes, they do it for the money).
Does the half-hour-later-on-a-bus fulfill that? The numbers I’d seen suggested 15 minutes at conversational distance with an infected person, you’d likely get it.
Yep, unchecked political narcissism is causing them to search for the media spotlight by one-upping draconian remedies. When this is over I’d love to see them pay.
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