Gone But Not Forgotten
Former President Trump may be gone , and many breathed a sign of relief when his presidency ended, but Covid-19 isn’t.
In the USA over the last decade, the annual death from the flu was between 20,000-40,000. In 2019-2020 there were 22,000 deaths. This according to Niall McCarthy writing in Forbes magazine on Oct 7, 2020, quoting CDC figure. The WHO (World Health Organization) estimates the annual influenza epidemics result in between 250,000-500,000 a year with 3-5 million cases of infection.
Early in the pandemic, the ex-President made the wild and erroneous claim that “100,000” or so people die every year from the flu, the truth was a quarter of that number. That claim was quickly debunked. Twitter hid the ex-president’s post, marking it with a tag stating that it violated its rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information relating to covid-19.
So far the world has seen 96,643,566 cases, at 12,388 per million, with 2,066,003 deaths, at 265 per million, with 112,143 critical cases, and 25,257,035 active cases.
In the USA, 24,809,241 cases have been reported at 74,711 per million with 411,520 deaths at 1239 per million, with 28,418 in critical condition, and 9,611,435 active cases. As has been widely reported, more people have died so far in the USA during this pandemic than in World War II.
Health experts blame the ex-President’s administration for first ignoring the seriousness of the Coronavirus and then fumbling the purchase and distribution of the vaccines. Except, critics say, when it came to his own VIP treatment, reserved for only those at the highest levels of power or connected to those levels, once he contracted the disease. Still, once he recovered, he waved aside the seriousness of the disease and kept up advice not to wear a mask and ignore health warnings about gatherings in public, all of which, critics say, contributed to the spread of the disease and startling death rate. To try to halt the spread of the virus, President Biden has issued an order that all federal employees must wear masks at work.
The doctor who touted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 has been arrested. Dr. Simone Gold, one of the ex-President’s supporters who pushed the ex-President’s claim that
“hydroxychloroquine works” as a treatment for COVID-19, was photographed holding a megaphone on the Rotunda floor during the Jan. 6 insurrection while making a similar claim. The FDA noted in a April 24 statement that it was aware of reports of “serious heart rhythm problems in patients with COVID-19 treated with hydroxychloroquine.” According to Yahoo News, Gold garnered national attention in July when she organized a press conference on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court to condemn pandemic lockdowns and rave about how “hydroxychloroquine works” as a treatment for COVID-19. Nearly 200 of the mob who rioted on Jan 6, 2020 have been arrested, so far.
Media reports that the ex-President is also planning to start his own political party called the “Patriots Party.” One pundit wrote that “Hopefully congress will disqualify him from ever running for public office again.” This, according to experts, can be accomplished either by convicting him at the impeachment hearings, or, if he is not convicted, then the Senate voting, even by a slim majority, to deny him the chance to run again. Some observers hope the moves succeed. The ex-President did say, as he boarded the presidential helicopter on the day he left office, that he would be back in one way or another. “Maybe as a ghost” quipped one critic.
In Israel, the Coronavirus continues to spread at an alarming rate. 9.2% of those tested had the virus. This, even though Israel is in the third week of a month-long lockdown, that might be extended further. So far, nearly 9,000 people have tested positive for C-19 within 24-hours. Overall Israel has recorded 570,085 infections, at 61,982 per million, with 4142 deaths at 450 per million, a record 308 people on ventilators, with 1113 critical cases and 82,930 active cases. According to Covid-19 Czar Nachum Ash, 30-40 percent of the infected had the newly discovered mutated “British” strain of the virus that is much more contagious than the earlier virus but not more deadly.
Some blame the ultra-Orthodox community for spreading the virus. 92-year-old ultra-Orthodox leader Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, one of the Haredi world’s leading authorities, decided that Haredi schools should be closed for two days. And then had them reopen. As of Tuesday, some 22.1 percent of daily tests from Haredi areas were coming back positive, compared to 9.2% in the general population, according to Roni Numa, head of the ultra-Orthodox desk at Israel’s coronavirus taskforce.
As the epidemic flares up in the Haredi community, the police have tried to enforce the government’s regulations. The Haredi community has resisted violently. Pitched battles were reported on Israel TV
on Jan 19, 2020 when the police tried to close the schools in the neighborhoods of Modiin Illit, Beit Shemesh, and parts of Jerusalem,.
According to TimesofIsrael, quoting Numa, High infection rates among Haredim are partly due to large family size and environmental factors, but experts also blame rule-breaking in large pockets of the community, often supported by rabbis and other community leaders.
Numa told Hebrew-language media that even in the current lockdown, some 15% of Haredi educational institutions were operating, and said that some 12,000 ultra-Orthodox students had contracted the coronavirus in the last month. According to Ynetnews, “hundreds of shuttles were seen unloading children at Haredi schools in the town of Beit Shemesh.
Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, who runs ZAKA, an ultra-Orthodox emergency health service, a Haredi version of the Magen David Adom ambulance service, waged an uphill battle for virus vigilance in the ultra-Orthodox community. In an interview in the TimesofIsrael Meshi-Zahav lamented that Haredi leaders were ignoring the warnings.
“There are leaders of the community who have blood on their hands,: said Meshi Zahav. He lost his mother to the virus and is angry at his community for ignoring common sense. He said he tried to convince her not to go to a Hanukkah party and she didn’t listen. Almost everyone at the party was later diagnosed with Covid-19. According to Meshi Zahav, some rabbis give approval to rule-breaking and downplay the virus threat. “People just aren’t absorbing the seriousness of the situation and the leaders are living on a different planet.” He called these rabbis worse than “holocaust deniers.”
So far, Israel’s push for the vaccination has been a success in the general population. Health Minister Yuli Edelstein provided ministry data showing that some 2,365,000 people have so far had the first of the two-shot Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and some 692,000 of those have also had their second dose. The number represents close to a quarter of Israel’s 9.3 million citizens and, according to Edelstein, maintains its position as the country with the highest per capita vaccination rate in the world, according to monitoring groups.
The problem is that many in the Haredi community eschew the
vaccine. A plethora of disinformation is rampant in the Haredi
community, including that the vaccine is harmful to healthy people
and especially harmful to pregnant women. On Tuesday, Jan 19, 10
pregnant women were admitted to the hospital suffering from Covid-19,
all in extremely serious condition. All of the women were from the
Haredi community.
Israel TV’s channel 12 reported that the fine for breaking the Covid-19 regulations were highest in the Israeli Arab community, and lowest in the Haredi sector, even if their contagion rates were similar. Some pundits attribute the disparity to PM Netanyahu’s catering to the Haredi leaders who he needs to stay in power.
Like some in the Haredi community the Israeli Arab community has reportedly been hit with a rash of disinformation and have also stayed away from the vaccine. The media has reported that Israel Arab HMO clinics at the end of the day have been dumping the vaccines they were given because so few Israeli Arabs showed up for the vaccine. This spurred some impatient Israelis, who were not Arab, to go to Arab towns and, through their HMO membership, receive the vaccine there rather than waiting to be directed to their own town or neighborhood.
The Palestinian Authority is not a partner to the Israeli HMO system since the PA is recognized as a separate and distinct entity from Israel with their own government, police, and health system. The PA has also reported high numbers of infection and is battling the contagion. The PA was late in ordering the vaccine and Israel has supplied some of her vaccines, but not much.
The fact that the PA is not part of Israel seems to have been lost on a US Congresswoman. According to Ynetnews, Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib took aim at Israel on Tuesday, calling the Jewish state "racist" for allegedly failing to provide coronavirus vaccines to the Palestinians.” She ignored the fact that according to the “Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for the healthcare of its own population and has repeatedly said it is obtaining Russia's Sputnik V vaccines via a UN scheme.” This didn’t stop Tlaib from erroneously calling Israel a racist state. Tlaib accused Israel of "denying" the Palestinians "access to a vaccine" due to, according to Ynetnews, an alleged belief that Palestinians are not equally human.
While many in Israel breathed a sigh of relief when the ex-President boarded Air Force One for his final trip as president, some wondered if President Biden wouldn’t be swayed by the “progressive” wing of the Democratic party, and people like Tliab who lets her own hatred and bias blind her from the truth, much as the ex-President did when facing facts he didn’t find comfortable. How Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu will deal with the new administration is yet another issue. Yesterday, when the media reported that President Biden was reopening negotiations with Iran, “sources at the highest level of the government,” said channel 12 military correspondent Roni Danieli, “have said if that’s the new administrations attitude, there’s nothing to talk about with Biden.”
Observers point out that under the Obama presidency, PM Netanyahu went right to the Senate to plead his case, ignoring Obama completely. How Netanyahu will deal with the new administration in Washington is an open question, especially since Netanyahu faces yet another election, the fourth in 2 years, on March 21st.
