The world is at a historically significant moment and the World Health Organization announced that the coronavirus is a global pandemic.
This is unchartered territory and a crisis never before experienced, as our world exists with strong international connections, businesses that are dependent on each other and cultures that are affected by each other.
Israel is also facing this dramatic moment in time. It is a very crowded country, among the most crowded in the West.
The number of people infected by the coronavirus tripled in less than one week. This is a real threat.
There has been a lot of fake news spread in recent weeks and that must be stopped.
Guidelines for the medical community were issued in Italy on Wednesday as to who among patients suffering from the coronavirus will be aided by respirators, and who will no longer be given use to one despite still being in the fight for his or her life.
Who should be kept out of hospitals and why?
Because of the rush on hospitals by coronavirus sufferers, in this affluent part of the country, people with strokes were neglected and there was no manpower available to conduct life-saving procedures including CPR.
Italy had 45 deaths from coronavirus at the beginning of March and as of Wednesday reported more than 800 dead.
This is not just flu as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described it. It never was just flu and unlike Netanyahu's assertion, coronavirus affects more than just the elderly population.
Israeli officials initially insisted this country is different from Italy and does not have community spread. The problem is with people arriving from abroad and bringing in the virus, they said. So, resources were directed towards the arrival hall at the Ben Gurion International Airport and the home front, as it were, was left unprotected.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Health Ministry Director General Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, Health Minister Yaakov Litzman
(Photo: Shalev Shalom)
Hospitals were stopped from conducting testing for the virus on anyone who had not recently traveled abroad. They were the only ones to be tested and even then, it was only when they were already running a fever.
At this critical moment, barring divine intervention in the form of a change of weather that will weaken the virus or some other unexpected occurrence, it is up to the government to make decisions that may cost the lives of many and will determine the state of the economy for a long time to come.
The government can say that coronavirus is here, a large percentage of the population will be sick and hospitals will be overrun by patients needing care but all that is inevitable and all we the decision-makers can do is try to slow the spread of the disease as much as possible and hope for the best. This is how past epidemics were dealt with.
Or it can learn from the Asian response. Hit hard and fast. Bring much of civilian life to a halt, take extraordinary steps and track down and isolate anyone who was exposed to the virus.
This is a much more painful approach at first, but it has shown great results in a relatively short period of time.
There was no one among the leading epidemiologists who thought China would come out of the crisis as quickly as it appears to have done. Even if the Chinese are not being completely truthful about the situation, Taiwan with a population of 32 million had 54 infected cases and one death. Containment was also reported in Singapore and even South Korea.
Adopting that approach would mean taking action, scrapping ridiculous press conferences that are being held primarily to compliment senior officials from the prime minister on down, and instead use the full force of government and industry to increase many fold the capacity for testing for coronavirus - drive-through testing is one option - locate and isolate every infected patient, close all public institutions, send staff to work from home and on and on.
These measures are not a new invention or a mere suggestion. They are an Asian art of war, a martial art used by some countries and it has already proved its effectiveness.
A government is needed in order to take control. So far we have been instructed on how to cough into our sleeves and use a tissue.
A government would enlist hundred of unemployed doctors currently at home, halt medical school studies and conscript students to man testing stations
And a real government would not tell people to stay at home if they were sick and only come to the hospital when their symptoms are grave. The desire to keep the hospitals free from dealing with mild cases is understandable, no one wants to waste precious beds on someone with a mild fever who hangs around the ward playing backgammon, but leaving the responsibility for public health in the hands of individuals is a dangerous thing and the state must step in and step up.
The coronavirus lasts a long time and often has a second wave so people will show up at emergency rooms regardless of the government's intentions.
According to the WHO after studying the cases in China, most infections are in close quarters so anyone infected that is staying indoors is likely to infect his or her family who in turn will go out and infect others.
The government is considering the use of hotels that could host the many expected “mild cases,” but that can be seen as raising a white flag in the face of this pandemic.
The sad fact is that this government was motivated by the hope that the weather would change, the virus would not spread or enough testing would be done. It has not taken the aggressive action it must now take because the consequences of its decisions thus far have been grave.