TEL AVIV – As Israel overtakes Western nations in its vaccination effort against Covid-19, it has become a model for a world that yearns to return to life as before.
The country inoculated a third of its population of 9 million in just over a month, and more than 80% of people aged 60 and over.
But if you ask most Israelis, the way the country handled the coronavirus has been anything but a success story. A recent survey by the non-partisan Israel Democracy Institute found that only 24% of Israelis approve of the government’s management of the crisis.
Although Israel boasts the highest vaccination rate in the world, it is also battling the world’s third worst infection rate.
Despite the vaccination campaign, January was the deadliest month in Israel, with 1,433 people dying from the virus – a third of the 5,000 deaths since the pandemic began. Israelis have also experienced some of the longest and most rigid national blockades in the world, with residents mostly confined to their homes for a cumulative period of four months.
In late December, Israel became the first country to enter a third blockade. Expected to last two weeks, it is still in effect.
Much of the success of Israel’s vaccination depends on its small size – roughly equivalent to New Jersey, both in land size and population – and its centralized universal health care system that allows virtually all Israelis to be vaccinated in a fully integrated manner.
However, there is another element driving Israel’s race to become the first country to vaccinate the majority of its population: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is running for re-election, again.
“Many Israelis feel that the management of this crisis has been greatly affected by Netanyahu’s own political considerations,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute.
In previous elections, Netanyahu fought corruption charges; now, before the March 23 election, he faces trial on these charges, an opponent of his own party and a pandemic that has killed thousands of Israelis and left many with the feeling that he has failed to navigate safely in this crisis.
Netanyahu, whose trial has been postponed several times for the blockades and is scheduled to appear in court on Monday, appears to be counting on a successful vaccination operation not only to allow Israel to get off the coronavirus, but also to help him. to recover election.
“He thinks the vaccine will help him, but I don’t, because the situation in Israel is only getting worse,” said Orly Almog, a member of the Black Flag movement, an anti-Netanyahu protest that started in March 2020 and has been speaking out against Netanyahu since the beginning of the pandemic.
Experts say the vaccine was not as effective in reducing the number of cases as some expected because there were not enough Israelis inoculated – 35% received the first dose, while 20% received both.
In addition, according to Itamar Grotto, deputy director general of the Ministry of Health, the vast majority of new cases in Israel are associated with the British variant, which is potentially more contagious and difficult to control with current vaccines.
Political opponents and anti-Netanyahu protesters are not the only ones to criticize their way of dealing with the pandemic.
Some 200 leading Israeli doctors and scientists have established two groups – the Common Sense Model and the Public Emergency Council for the Coronavirus Crisis (PECC) – to speak out against what they say is poor crisis management. Members of these groups include former directors of the Israeli Ministry of Health, heads of Israeli hospitals and medical schools and winners of the Nobel Prize and the Israel Prize, the country’s greatest distinction.
According to these experts, Israel’s dependence on national closings has been unnecessary and ineffective.
“Blockages can decrease the prevalence of the disease, but in the end, they do not affect the number of people who are sick or dead,” said Dr. Yoav Yehezkelli, a member of the Common Sense Model and the PECC who helped design Israel’s programs to deal with an epidemic.
The roadblocks, he said, “can be taken to an extreme situation in which the health system is flooded, as we saw at the beginning of the pandemic in China or Italy.”
But the Israeli health care system “has never been close to collapsing,” said Yehezkelli, who lectures on emergency and disaster management at Tel Aviv University.
Not all medical experts share this perspective.
The blocks “were very useful in reducing morbidity and mortality in the first two rounds,” said Ronit Calderon-Margalit, a professor of epidemiology at the Hebrew University, who has advised the government, referring to Israel’s earlier blocks.
It is the steps to get out of the blocks that can cause problems.
“There was no clear government strategy, and even when there was, in the case of the traffic light strategy, it was never carried out,” added Calderon-Margalit, referring to the model in which the blocks are applied in “red” areas with high infection rates and “green” areas with low infection rates have more freedom.
“We have wasted the arsenal of blockades,” she added.
Even government officials say the latest blockade was a failure.
“The predictions were wrong,” said Ran Balicer, chairman of the national panel of experts on Covid-19, minutes before a cabinet meeting on Thursday.
“The block as a means of magic … is dead,” added Balicer, a professor in the Department of Public Health at Ben-Gurion University.
Before that meeting, Netanyahu was pushing for another blocking extension. In the hours before the blockade ended on Friday morning, the government announced it would be extended until Sunday.
As in other countries, some experts also criticize the enormous economic costs of closing.
According to Aaron Ciechan over, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, “four hours of confinement is worth the annual budget of the Israel Cancer Association”.
Yehezkelli and his colleagues are more concerned with the devastating long-term effects on Israelis’ physical and mental health.
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These medical experts also believe that government decisions were driven by policy. The Minister of Health, Yuli Edelstein, is a Netanyahu political nominee with no health experience. His predecessor, Yakov Litzman, who served until May 2020, had no medical training, flouted his own ministry’s coronavirus guidelines and tested positive for Covid-19.
Critics cite as an excellent example of politically oriented decision-making the lack of application of Covid-19 guidelines in many ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, where schools tend to remain open and large marriages and funerals continue to take place.
Israel would be in a much better place, say many medical experts, if Netanyahu had not abandoned the so-called traffic light strategy to impose blockades.
Former Israeli coronavirus czar Ronni Gamzu tried to implement this strategy, but was blocked by Netanyahu because many of the red areas are ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods that are the prime minister’s strongholds in trouble. Not wanting to alienate the ultra-Orthodox, who represent 12% of Israel’s population, Netanyahu opted for the current general approach.
The resentment created by this double standard will be a factor for many voters in March, Plesner said. “Inspection is highly skewed in favor of the ultra-orthodox population”, which, according to government statistics, constitutes almost 40% of virus cases and receives only 2% of fines for violating the blocking rules.
According to Calderon and other medical experts who are not part of the Common Sense Model or the PECC, virtually all healthcare professionals in Israel agree that traffic light policy is preferable to total blocking, which has led to fatigue that prevents compliance, making this block less effective.
Grotto, the Ministry of Health official, said there is truth to criticism that Netanyahu’s treatment of the pandemic may be motivated by political interests.
“But it is also cultural. Even if the ultra-Orthodox community was not part of the [governing] coalition, there would still be a problem with enforcement, ”he said, noting that despite the high number of deaths among them, many religious leaders and their followers continue to rebel against the restrictions.
The prime minister’s office declined to comment on the record of this story.
For most democratically elected leaders, these challenges can pose an existential threat to any hope of re-election.
Even so, Netanyahu is known as a political wizard, or “King Bibi” for his base, for good reason.
According to the latest polls, Netanyahu has the best chance of forming a government, although he is favored by only 30% of voters.
Second in the polls: “I don’t know” or “None of them”.