As countries now begin to, or plan to, relax their lockdowns and struggle to restart their economies, I have a niggling suspicion at the back of my brain that the world reaction may have involved more of panic and less of rationality. That the world may have overreacted in a fearful chain reaction may be understandable but was the chosen solution actually worse than the problem?
” ….. the spread of COVID-19 peaks after about 40 days and declines to almost zero after 70 days — no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it”.
This is from Prof Isaac Ben-Israel, head of the Security Studies program in Tel Aviv University, Chairman of the National Council for Research and Development and Head of Israel’s Space Agency.
A case perhaps of a kind of Mass hysteria?
A prominent Israeli mathematician, analyst and former general claims simple statistical analysis demonstrates that the spread of COVID-19 peaks after about 40 days and declines to almost zero after 70 days — no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it.
Prof Isaac Ben-Israel, head of the Security Studies program in Tel Aviv University and the chairman of the National Council for Research and Development, told Israel’s Channel 12 (Hebrew) Monday night that research he conducted with a fellow professor, analyzing the growth and decline of new cases in countries around the world, showed repeatedly that “there’s a set pattern” and “the numbers speak for themselves.”
……..
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.” He said the policy of lockdowns and closures was a case of “mass hysteria.” Simple social distancing would be sufficient, he said. If the lockdowns instituted in Israel and elsewhere were not causing such immense economic havoc, there wouldn’t be a problem with them, he said. “But you shouldn’t be closing down the entire country when most of the population is not at high risk.”
Asked to explain why the virus had caused such a high death toll in countries such as Italy, he said the Italian health service was already overwhelmed. “It collapsed in 2017 because of the flu,” he said.
Tags: coronavirus, covid-19
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