Aug 15, 2021

will you adhere to a lockdown?

Internal surveys have shown that 30% of Israeli citizens are confident they would adhere to the rules of a lockdown during the holidays, should it be imposed.

Personally I am surprised the number is so high. And the reason is not because much of Israel does not see Bennett as a legitimate Prime Minister and therefore his lockdown is also illegitimate. The reason is because people have had enough , already a long time ago.

The first lockdown, imposed by then PM Benjamin Netanyahu, in March-April 2020 for Pesach was adhered to very tightly and enforced very strictly.  Covid-19 was new, people did not know, everyone was afraid, it seemed very serious, enforcement was tight. Netanyahu's next two lockdowns were hardly listened to. Enforcement was loose and weak and people were not interested - rules were contradictory and often nonsensical and people had had enough. Now is no different, and possibly worse. People are not interested. The religious will mostly not listen because they see the decision as political - if necessary why not now and stop the vacationing instead of during the High Holidays when we need our shuls? That in addition to many not seeing Bennett as legitimate. The general public will mostly not listen just because nobody is interested in that anymore. 

Other solutions are needed, and I hope the 30% support for following lockdown rules will show the government that this is not the way to go. Personally I think there will not be a lockdown, but I guess it likely depend son how much the vaccination campaign (new vaccines plus 3rd shot boosters) is successful in bringing the numbers down...




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7 comments:

  1. The reason people listened the first time is because it was reasonable to think there was a serious risk of dying of a deadly new virus, there were no vaccines/recovered people, and nobody wanted hospitals to get overwhelmed in an emergency. Now we know that people under 50 without underlying health conditions/overweight people have basically a zero chance of dying or even being very sick. Plus we have vaccines. Old people and sick people should lock themselves up if they are worried but the rest of us have jobs and schools to go to and our mental health counts too. As for the hospitals, there are now new/better treatments and they had time to add beds. So a lockdown is ridiculous.

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    Replies
    1. "Old people and sick people should lock themselves up..."
      That's generous.

      "The reason people listened the first time... So a lockdown is ridiculous."
      You're conflating minor restrictions (like masks, social distancing & quarantine) with lockdowns. Indeed lockdowns are severe, costly and should only be used as a last resort. But what's your problem with the other restrictions?

      Delete
  2. The question "Will you adhere to a lockdown" is meaningless without defining the parameters.

    For example the following 2 questions would receive very different results:

    Question 1:
    The government is planning a 2 week lockdown with no gatherings of more than 50 people indoors or 500 outdoors, masks required indoors, and there will be 1000 officers enforcing the lockdown with a 5000 shekel fine for any breach of the requirements.
    Will you adhere to this lockdown?

    Question 2:
    The government is planning a strict lockdown until we get down to less than 10 cases a day, minimum of 6 weeks. During that time no citizens will be allowed more than 50 meters from their house, and no gatherings of more than 10 people will be allowed.
    The government is relying on citizens to be responsible, so there will be no fines given for breach of lockdown.
    Will you adhere to this lockdown?

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  3. Notice that even if people did not follow the rule companies mostly did and all the three lockdowns (except maybe the third) were effectuve in bringing down contagions

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. of course lockdowns help, but only as much as people adhere to the rules. if people are not in contact with each other, the virus cant spread. If even just 50% of the people follow the rules (and I dont know if it was more or less), the virus will spread 50% less.

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  4. The reason we are still in this mess, is because most of the public is incapable or does not want to follow the regulations. If everyone wore masks, kept social distancing, etc, we would not have had numerous waves. To wear masks, it is over mouth and nose. Instead people prefer to wear from their chin for one and a half years already.

    ReplyDelete