Professor Ehud Qimron: “Ministry of Health, it’s time to admit failure”
This is a bizarre letter containing an absolute scattershot of claims and half statements. Is it a translation problem?<p>&gt;Two years late, you finally realize that a respiratory virus cannot be defeated and that any such attempt is doomed to fail.<p>Is he just saying that that all precautions for respiratory viruses like masks, vaccines and distancing are useless and should be stopped? Is he suggesting that we stop using the flu vaccine as well?<p>&gt; You refused to admit that the infection comes in waves that fade by themselves, despite years of observations and scientific knowledge.<p>Is he arguing again that vaccines, masks and other measures have no impact on covid infection numbers? Is there another explanation for why the covid death rate varies so much from place to place regardless of population statistics? Why does Mississippi for example, have a death rate so much higher than places like California or New York, which are much more heavily populated? Is there a good explanation for why Sweden was so hard hit that doesn&#x27;t reference their total lack of response?<p>&gt;You refused to admit that mass testing is ineffective, despite your own contingency plans explicitly stating so (“Pandemic Influenza Health System Preparedness Plan, 2007”, p. 26).<p>I haven&#x27;t read the quoted document, but is there a particular reason why it is the final word on the subject and can&#x27;t be changed or updated with respect to new information?<p>&gt;You refused to admit that recovery is more protective than a vaccine, despite previous knowledge and observations showing that non-recovered vaccinated people are more likely to be infected than recovered people.<p>What is he reading? This only came out conclusively in the past few months, and isn&#x27;t much of a gotcha. The vaccine is far safer than covid, so giving the vaccine to millions is much safer than giving covid to millions. Not to mention that being recovered and vaccinated offers even better protection. Given the lower opportunity cost of vaccinating and the policy complications of exceptions to vaccination requirements, what&#x27;s his argument that justifies the problem of making an exception program and managing it?<p>&gt; You refused to admit that the vaccinated are contagious despite the observations.<p>I have no idea where he&#x27;s getting this from.<p>&gt; Based on this, you hoped to achieve herd immunity by vaccination — and you failed in that as well.<p>There were very clear vaccination levels necessary for herd immunity that were calculated early on, and few places in the world have even come close to them. Most places have 15-20% to few people vaccinated to even test the herd immunity predictions.<p>&gt;You insisted on ignoring the fact that the disease is dozens of times more dangerous for risk groups and older adults, than for young people who are not in risk groups, despite the knowledge that came from China as early as 2020.<p>Just wrong. And what is he trying to say here? Is this a repeat of the &quot;everyone over 60 should just die&quot; line that went around the US in 2020?<p>&gt; You have not set up an effective system for reporting side effects from the vaccines<p>Maybe this is true in Israel, but the US figured out pretty quickly that there was a 7 in 1,000,000 chance for the J&amp;J vaccine to cause blood clots. Is he suggesting that some vaccines have been monitored for side effects and others have not? What&#x27;s his data?<p>&gt; Reports on side effects have even been deleted from your Facebook page<p>Ummm, moving right along.<p>The rest is just rambling. The most generous interpretation of his stance seems to be that maybe vaccines and masks are okay, but any further steps like widespread testing, are bad and vulnerable people should just expect to die. It would be nice if he had expressed his argument a little more coherently. Maybe then people could actually respond to this letter instead of blowing it off.