With God’s help, eve of Yom Kippur 5781

To “Lapito” — greetings,

The proposal to obligate someone who, in another person’s opinion, contracted coronavirus because of his own carelessness would make people suffering from symptoms afraid to come get tested, out of fear that they would be subjected to “personal sanctions.” So your proposal would achieve the opposite.

It is worth noting that the percentage of “positives” out of all those tested is over 10%; in other words, there are currently about a million “coronavirus carriers” in Israel. How exactly are we supposed to “be careful” around them? Enter an endless “lockdown” at home?

And out of the million “carriers” there are only about 700 seriously ill patients and 1,400 dead (0.2 percent of the “carriers”; 0.02 percent of the population). And most of them are elderly and have serious underlying illnesses, so it is not clear whether coronavirus caused their condition. So we are in a “disaster”?

There is absolutely no need for panic—not collective punishment and not draconian “sanctions.” We need to continue enforcing and encouraging protective measures—masks, distancing, hygiene, and avoiding dense gatherings—while continuing economic and social life with appropriate restrictions, and to stop “scaring ourselves to death.” Anxiety (even without double-yud 🙂 ) does not contribute to the body’s resilience.

Regards, S. Tz.

That’s just chatter, with all due respect. It’s enough to fine the guilty sick people who end up having to come to the hospital, and that way the whole pyramid is affected. The current situation is ridiculous: if a policeman didn’t catch someone at the moment of negligence, then the only punishment is to become infected and sick—and it turns out that isn’t enough of a deterrent. Caution means, first and foremost, wearing a mask over the mouth and nostrils nonstop when around other people. The problem of dodging tests can also be avoided by giving a strong punitive head-butt to the nose of someone caught having had symptoms and not rushing to get tested. Ordinary people under a public-information campaign will not neglect consequences like those. In general, in this country people like to complain that there’s no solidarity and there are divisions and all that, but I actually think there’s a disgusting glut of interpersonal niceness even between citizens of hostile kinds, and the division in the political theater, oddly enough, really does not seep down enough below. I also have a few ideas about how to improve the lack of practical mutual loathing (which in my opinion would attach a practical price tag to political behaviors and choices—a very important thing), but this is not the place.

S. Tz., what you say here assumes that the tests are random screening tests, which is certainly not true

I would suggest first putting on trial all those who obeyed the Health Ministry guidelines at the beginning of the epidemic (when, as you may recall, the guidelines were minimalistic), thanks to whose model citizenship and stupidity the rest of us are now required to be careful.

All fools should be forbidden to go vote in elections for the other fools.