TEL AVIV – As Israel surpasses Western nations in its vaccination effort with Covid-19, it has become a role model for a world that wants to live again, as it once did.
The country has vaccinated a third of its population of 9 million in just over a month, and more than 80 percent of those 60 and older.
But if you ask most Israelites, the country’s handling of the coronavirus was anything but a success story. A recent poll by the non-partisan Israel Democracy Institute found that only 24 percent of Israelis approve of the government managing the crisis.
While Israel boasts the highest vaccination rate in the world, it also fights with the third worst infection rate in the world.
Despite the vaccination campaign, January was Israel’s deadliest month, 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 world’s most severe and prolonged national exclusions, with residents mostly confined to their homes for a cumulative period of four months.
At the end of December, Israel became the first country to enter a third exclusion. Intended to last two weeks, it is still in effect.
Much of Israel’s successful vaccination is based on its small size – roughly equivalent to New Jersey in both land size and population – and its centralized universal health care system that enables virtually all Israelis to be vaccinated seamlessly.
Yet there is another element that is making Israel’s sprint toward the first country that has vaccinated a majority of its population: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is re-elected.
“Many Israelis feel that the management of this crisis has been greatly influenced by Netanyahu’s own political considerations,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute.
In previous elections, Netanyahu has fought corruption charges; now, ahead of the March 23 election, he is facing charges, a challenge from his own party and a pandemic that has killed thousands of Israelis and made many people feel that he has failed to overcome this crisis do not navigate.
Netanyahu, whose trial has been delayed several times due to the lockdown and who will appear in court on Monday, is counting on a successful vaccination operation to not only enable Israel to get out of the coronavirus, but also to kill him. help wen. election.
“He thinks the vaccine will help him, but I do not do it because the situation in Israel is only getting worse,” said Orly Almog, a member of the Black Flag movement, in a protest against Netanyahu that began in March 2020. . and protests against Netanyahu since the pandemic began.
Experts believe that the vaccine was not as effective in reducing the case load as some expected, because not enough Israelites were fully vaccinated – 35 percent received the first dose, while 20 percent received both.
According to Itamar Grotto, co-director general at the Ministry of Health, the vast majority of new cases in Israel are related to the British variant, which is possibly more contagious and difficult to control with current vaccines.
Political opponents and protesters against Netanyahu are not the only ones criticizing the handling of the pandemic.
Some 200 leading Israeli doctors and scientists have formed two groups – the Common Sense Model and the Public Emergency Council for the Coronavirus Crisis (PECC) – to speak out against the mismanagement of the crisis. Members of these groups include former directors of the Israeli Ministry of Health, heads of Israeli hospitals and medical schools, and recipients of the Nobel Prize and the Israel Prize, the country’s highest distinction.
According to these experts, Israel’s reliance on national closures was unnecessary and ineffective.
“Locking can reduce the incidence of diseases, but in the end it does not affect the number of sick or dead,” said Dr. Yoav Yehezkelli, member of the Common Sense Model and the PECC, who helped Israel’s deal with an epidemic.
Lockdowns, he said, “can be taken in an extreme situation where the health care 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 collapse,” said Yehezkelli, who lectures on emergency and disaster management at Tel Aviv University.
Not all medical experts share this perspective.
Lockdowns ‘were very helpful in reducing disease and mortality in the first two rounds,’ said Ronit Calderon-Margalit, a professor of epidemiology at Hebrew University who advised the government, citing Israel’s previous closures.
These are the steps you need to take to rule out issues that may be causing problems.
“There was still no clear strategy from the government, and even then, in the case of the traffic light strategy, it was never implemented,” Calderon-Margalit added, referring to the model in which locks are applied. “Red” areas with high infection rates, and “green” areas with low infection rates have more freedom.
“We’ve wasted the arsenal of locks,” she added.
Even government officials say the latest exclusion has failed.
“The predictions were wrong,” Ran Balicer, chair of the national panel of experts on Covid-19, said minutes before a cabinet meeting on Thursday.
“Lockdown as a magic bullet … is dead,” added Balicer, a professor in the Department of Public Health at Ben-Gurion University.
Prior to this meeting, Netanyahu campaigned for another exclusion. In the hours before the closure was due to end on Friday morning, the government announced that it would be extended until Sunday.
As in other countries, some experts also assume the overwhelming economic cost of closure.
According to Aaron Ciechan, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2004, “a four-hour lock-up is worth the annual budget of the Israeli Cancer Society.”
Yehezkelli and his colleagues are most concerned about the devastating long-term effects on the physical and mental health of Israelites.
Download the NBC News app for news and politics
These medical experts also believe that the government’s decisions were driven by politics. Health Minister Yuli Edelstein is a political appointment of Netanyahu without health background. His predecessor, Yakov Litzman, who served until May 2020, had no medical background, disregarded the coronavirus guidelines of his own ministry, and tested positive for Covid-19.
Critics cite as an excellent example of politically driven decision-making the lack of adherence to Covid-19 guidelines in many ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, where schools often remain open, and large weddings and funerals continue to take place.
According to many medical experts, Israel would be in a much better place if Netanyahu had not abandoned the so-called traffic light strategy to enforce closure.
Israel’s former coronavirus tsar, Ronni Gamzu, tried to implement the strategy but was blocked by Netanyahu because many of the red areas are ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods that are strongholds for the troubled prime minister. Netanyahu did not want to alienate the ultra-Orthodox, who represent 12 percent of Israel’s population, but 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. ‘Enforcement is very skewed in favor of the ultra-Orthodox population’, which according to government statistics accounts for almost 40 per cent of virus cases and receives only 2 per cent fines for violating lock-in rules.
According to Calderon and other medical experts who are not part of the Common Sense Model or the PECC, virtually every health worker in Israel agrees that the traffic light policy is preferable to the total exclusion, which has led to fatigue that impedes compliance. , which makes this closure less effective.
Grotto, the health ministry official, said there was criticism that Netanyahu’s handling of the pandemic could be driven by political interests.
‘But it’s also cultural. Even though 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 death toll among them, many religious leaders and their followers are still rebelling against restrictions.
The prime minister’s office declined to comment on the record for this story.
For most democratically elected leaders, these challenges can pose an existential threat to any hope of re-election.
Yet Netanyahu is rightly known as a political magician, or ‘King Bibi’.
According to the latest polls, Netanyahu has the best chance of forming a government, although he is favored by only about 30 percent of voters.
Second behind him in the polls: “Do not know” or “None of it.”