Interesting.
Note that he isn't a medical professional. "
Isaac Ben-Israel (
Hebrew: יצחק בן ישראל, born 26 July 1949) is an
Israeli military scientist,
general and ex-politician. He currently serves as the chairman of the
Israeli Space Agency and the National Council for Research and Development, under the auspices of the
Ministry of Science, Technology and Space of
Israel." (wikipedia)
Here I see the following:
"While he said he supports social distancing, the widespread shuttering of economies worldwide constitutes a demonstrable error in light of those statistics. In Israel’s case, he noted, about 140 people normally die every day. To have shuttered much of the economy because of a virus that is killing one or two a day is a radical error that is unnecessarily costing Israel 20% of its GDP, he charged."
Prof. Gabi Barbash, a hospital director and the former Health Ministry director general, insisted in a bitter TV exchange that Ben-Israel is mistaken, and that the death tolls would have been far higher if Israel and other countries had not taken the steps they did.
But Ben-Israel said the figures — notably from countries, such as Singapore, Taiwan, and Sweden, which did not take such radical measures to shutter their economies — proved his point. (He also released a
paper to this effect, with graphs showing the trajectories.)
When Barbash cited New York as ostensible proof that Ben-Israel was mistaken, Ben-Israel noted the latest indications from New York were precisely in line with his statistics that indicate daily new cases figures peaking and starting to fall after about 40 days.
Asked to explain the phenomenon, Ben-Israel, who also heads Israel’s Space Agency, later said: “I have no explanation. There are all kinds of speculations. Maybe it’s related to climate, or the virus has a life-span of its own.”"
Ben-Israel is clearly wrong. Bringing Taiwan and Singapore as examples is weird. Taiwan avoided a lockdown only because they slammed their borders shut very early in the game, and tracked every single case carefully.
Basically is comes down to this: you do the social distancing thing. Things improved, or if you did them early, they turned out pretty good- and then some genius will say "see! you didn't need that! The projections were wrong!"
But the projections were telling us what would happen if we didn't have social distancing. And places like Italy show that they were right. Things are calming down in Italy
because of the lockdown
Why is it so hard to accept the plain facts here? Denial? Total mistrust of everybody?
