Doesn’t the fact that here the greatest of the doctors (heads of medical schools, a Nobel Prize laureate, former directors-general) disagree with the policy (in their well-known letter sent to Bibi) tilt the scales in their favor?
Those who support the current policy are seemingly not in the same league.
And yes, I mean to listen to them in matters that concern me and my immediate family (young people).

And most importantly—in my opinion, after two months into the event, reality proves that the government’s policy was wrong.

Those who argue that the lockdown saved us need to deal with the case of Bnei Brak and Jerusalem, which entered lockdown two weeks late.

The whole country was in an uproar (and this site too….) with horror predictions of thousands of dead and a shortage of ventilators because of the irresponsible Haredim—and in practice the situation is not even close to the most optimistic forecast of the doomsayers (about 13 dead, the overwhelming majority elderly people with illnesses, in Bnei Brak).

Isn’t this conclusive evidence against the theory of a terrible plague?

Statistical data from around the world also present a picture of mortality at the level of seasonal flu (in Europe it was measured and found that the mortality rate this winter is lower than the mortality rate in the winter of 2017, for example)

Alex, you are impressed far too easily by all kinds of letters from experts and scholars. There is no topic in the world on which I couldn’t get an impressive number of experts in every field and in every direction to sign a letter. Especially since these experts bear no responsibility if they turn out to be wrong.
For my own part, I also get the impression that the government did not act correctly in managing the crisis (I strongly suspect that Bibi is biased by his own interests, which in the end also bore fruit. The hysteria he pumped into everyone ultimately brought him the premiership). But at the same time, in some of these experts’ letters I found nonsense (as with Yitzhak Ben-Israel, whom everyone quotes. Just plain mathematical mistakes). But since I do not know all the facts and am not an expert in epidemiology, and certainly have no authority to make decisions for the public as a whole, I do not allow myself to instruct myself or others to deviate from the directives. That is completely irresponsible.
You are also mistaken in your conclusions from reality. First, reality does not prove that they were right. The lockdown definitely contributed to the relatively low mortality. Second, the mortality is not as low as you present it. Third, the concern was (and still is) hospital overload, not only the absolute number of deaths, but the rate of deaths and illness. Do you really think that Italy and Spain are seasonal flu? Thousands of people are suffocating in hospitals and dying because there are no ventilators. In your eyes that is flu? I’m not talking only about the number of patients but about the curve, the rate.
By your logic, one should also permit driving at any speed on any road. At most there will be another hundred deaths a year on the roads. Negligible compared to the flu. Likewise, there is no point in fighting terror. How many deaths will there already be compared to the flu?
Even if the experts are right that the lockdown is not justified and is not the optimal way to handle the situation, the alternative still requires a different overall policy. For example, if you ease the lockdown, you need at the same time to isolate the sick and the elderly more strictly. But to adopt only the easing of the lockdown without the part that says what to do with the elderly and the sick is a recipe for disaster. And since only your own actions are in your hands, and you cannot control the rest of the population, it would be irresponsible to act against the instructions.
The number of dead in Bnei Brak is definitely unusual, and the fact that these are elderly people with illnesses—that is the case all over the world. Just don’t start now telling me what I expected from the start would happen (look what a miracle: among Bnei Brak residents the percentage of deaths is astonishingly low). That is not factually correct, and it also proves nothing.
In this context it is worth seeing Rabbi Shach’s letter in his Letters and Articles (if I remember correctly, the second letter in section 2). He speaks there about the relation between prior expectations and estimates and the actual realization of the forecasts (does non-fulfillment prove that the expectations were incorrect). The topic there is the Entebbe operation. Worth reading.
In my opinion there are more mistakes in what you wrote, but it seems to me that these are enough to persuade you not to act according to your own understanding, and not to rely on self-appointed experts. Things are more complex than you think.
You know me as a critical and nonconformist person, who does not really trust government institutions (and not experts either). And even so, in my opinion here it is irresponsible to draw practical conclusions from considerations like these.

Just noting that for every expert who opposes the policy* there are experts no less prominent who support it.
The involvement of the professional echelon (epidemiologists and medical professionals) in the government’s decision-making is extremely high. And the attempt to present this as an arbitrary, self-interested whim of Bibi and Litzman is far from the reality.

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* By the way, many of these “experts” are people who do not know the field of disease research, and they are experts only because they have an M.D. There was a TV interview not long ago with an oncologist who opposes the lockdown (what does an oncologist understand about epidemiology? Approximately nothing).

Thank you for the detailed answer.

I’ll put the experts aside for a moment, and refer only to the facts (to the extent they can be relied upon):

1. “That Italy and Spain are seasonal flu” — a European site that measures mortality rates in 24 European countries (including Italy, Spain, France, England, Germany) shows that indeed mortality in the current winter did not exceed mortality in the winter of 2017.

2. “The number of dead in Bnei Brak is definitely unusual” — I didn’t understand…. Is 13 dead unusual for the better or for the worse? In official publications of the Israeli Ministry of Health, you can see that the average monthly number of deaths in Israel is about 4,000. If we subtract 30–60 deaths from accidents/murders, we are still left with almost 4,000 dead (about 1,000 of them from complications of pneumonia). So with all the sorrow over the 170 dead in two months (most of whom, thank God, were granted long lives), where exactly do we see in Israel even a mini-epidemic?

3. In my opinion we got used too quickly to the expression “died from coronavirus.” It is not at all clear what the criterion is for determining “death from coronavirus” (coronavirus, as is known, does not kill directly, but can cause complications of pneumonia and respiratory failure that will cause death). If an 85-year-old with severe underlying illnesses dies and coronavirus is found in his blood—is it obvious that there is causality here and coronavirus caused the death, or did he die from cause X, and he just also happened to have coronavirus in his blood (along with other assorted ailments)? There are quite a few experts who doubt the Ministry of Health’s data.

4. Regarding the number of “patients” (about 14,000) — we see with our own eyes that a large portion of them, most of them, have mild symptoms to the point of being imperceptible!! There are quite a few people (I personally know some) whose test showed that they were sick and they didn’t know it… Meaning—the formula says that if a virus is found in your blood = you are sick…

5. Regarding “driving at any speed on any road” — in my humble opinion it is not comparable, because there there is no possibility at all of substantive authority telling us that 110 kph is fine, and more than that is not. But here many experts whose profession this is are standing up and saying that not only is the policy mistaken, it is even harmful, because the damage from the lockdown will be dozens of times greater than the damage (if there will be any) from lifting the lockdown + protecting those at risk.

And by the way—I meant one letter signed jointly by leading doctors—I’m pasting its content here including the names of the signatories.

We, physicians, economists, and scientists, are deeply troubled by the economic and medical crisis afflicting the country בעקבות the coronavirus epidemic, and by the current policy of the Ministry of Health in combating the epidemic. This policy continues to adhere to an ongoing tightening of movement restrictions and lockdown and does not set a clear date for exiting the crisis and returning to normal life. The movement restrictions and lockdown in the struggle against the epidemic have already caused enormous damage to the economy and society, and it is still unclear how we will overcome it. Fortunately, the rate of severe cases and deaths from coronavirus in Israel is at this time significantly lower than what has been observed in other countries and than the grim forecasts presented at the beginning of the epidemic, even when taking into account the troubling localized events in Bnei Brak and in other urban concentrations. These data strongly reinforce the possibility that Israel is not expected to suffer health damage of the kind we are seeing in Italy and Spain because of the epidemic. For all the importance of the overall struggle against the spread of the virus, the time has come to balance this struggle with the efforts to save the economy and the marketplace and to reduce the ongoing harm to other patients who were not infected with coronavirus and who need the health system. To the best of our assessment, there are all the capabilities and means to treat coronavirus patients and to guard against a renewed spread of the epidemic on the one hand, while at the same time returning normal life to its course and rehabilitating the economy.

Signatories:

Prof. Mordechai Shani — former Director-General of the Ministry of Health; Prof. Yoram Lass — former Director-General of the Ministry of Health; Prof. Peretz Lavie — medicine, former president of the Technion; Prof. Rivka Carmi — medicine, former president of Ben-Gurion University; Prof. Aaron Ciechanover — medicine, Nobel Prize laureate, Technion Medical School; Prof. Menahem Yaari — economics, former president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities; Prof. Dina Ben-Yehuda — Dean of the Medical School, Jerusalem; Prof. Aylon Eisenberg — Dean of the Technion Medical School; Prof. Amos Katz — Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University; Prof. Rafi Beyar — former Director-General of Rambam Hospital; Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg — economics, former chair of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and former member of Knesset; Prof. Zvi Eckstein — Department of Economics, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya; Prof. Angel Porgador — Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University; Prof. Dan Greenberg — Health Systems Management, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University; Prof. Michael Elkin — medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University; Prof. Amos Korczyn — medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University; Prof. Amos Panet — Medical School, Jerusalem; Prof. Amnon Lahad — medicine, Medical School, Jerusalem; Prof. Efrat Levy-Lahad — medicine, Shaare Zedek Hospital, Jerusalem; Dr. Margalit Lorber — medicine, Technion Medical School; Dr. Yishai Ofran — medicine, Rambam Hospital, Technion Medical School; Prof. Rafi Walden — medicine, Physicians for Human Rights; Dr. Kobi Richter — economics, industrialist; Dr. Ron Babkoff — economics, BeyondDocs Ltd.; Prof. Zvi Bentwich — medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University

It is hard to address all the arguments, and my basic response has already been written. I’ll just say that these “experts” are for the most part experts in this field about as much as I am. I heard some of them with my own ears talking nonsense like children. I am really not impressed.
I just found something that may interest you:
https://newmedia.calcalist.co.il/magazine-23-04-20/m02.html

“It is hard to address all the arguments” — is that because they are good, or because of lack of time? 🙂

Thanks in any case for the quick reply; I’m staying with my position.