A group of Israeli doctors and scientists signed an open letter on Sunday urging the government to refrain from imposing a lockdown.
The letter stated that a lockdown doesn’t stop the virus but only delays it and espoused allowing the public to develop “deep immunity” by protecting the elderly population. The letter mentioned the “Swedish model” as a recommendation for handling the pandemic.
“We are calling for a lockdown to be removed from the table,” the letter stated. “At the same time, we are calling to align Sweden’s policies with Israel’s reality by diverting infections away from at-risk groups toward those not at risk, by, among other things, leaving schools open.”
The letter then recommended that the government “remove social distancing regulations in a manner that allows the continuous exposure of the non-at-risk populations to the virus, an exposure that will lead to the development of herd immunity.”
The letter does not explain how the elderly and at-risk populations can be protected if everyone else in the population is exposed to the virus.
Unlike its neighbors, Sweden refrained from imposing a lockdown when the pandemic first began, implementing minimal restrictions and only recommending other restrictions.
However, it is puzzling why anyone would recommend the Swedish approach, which ultimately proved a failure, with the country experiencing a far higher death rate than its neighbors, and not even sparing themselves from a hit to their economy, which ensued anyway due to a spillover effect from the hit to the global economy.
Furthermore, according to Prof. Ran Balicer, a senior public health official at Clalit and an advisor to the Health Ministry on infectious disease epidemiology, “the ‘Swedish model’ would not succeed in Israel in any shape or form.”
In an interview with B’Chadrei Chareidim, Balicer said that anyone who raises the idea of Israel adopting the Swedish model has simply not studied the material and hasn’t seen the data, denying the claim that the Swedish model was successful. Furthermore, he says that Sweden never intended to reach herd immunity.
Balicer, who serves on the Knesset’s coronavirus cabinet, elaborated: “Contrary to those that try to create an impression that the Swedish model succeeded, even in Sweden itself they admit outright that it was a failure. Sweden has a similar population size to Israel and they paid a high price of thousands of fatalities. They also suffered from a severe economic downturn, the same as their neighboring countries, despite the fact that they didn’t impose a lockdown or restrictions.”
Furthermore, Balicer added, from conversations he had with Swedish health officials, it’s clear that Sweden had no plan, at any stage, of achieving herd immunity. Their approach was to simply refrain from taking drastic steps because they thought that it was possible to prevent mass infection without doing so.
Finally, Balicer explained that in any case, there are huge cultural differences between Swedes and Israelis that make the model completely unrealistic for Israel. “Whoever is aware of the data, of the differences in culture and mentality, understands immediately that there’s no possibility of adopting the Swedish model in Israel, even partially, because the removal of restrictions will be immediately disastrous.”
“There nothing comparable between us and Sweden. First of all, 40% of households in Sweden are single people so in the first place the virus couldn’t have spread there as it does in Israel, where most households are comprised of families, leading to mass infections, which if left unchecked, will lead to disaster.”
“That’s without even mentioning the fact that in Sweden the public obeys the guidelines, viewing them as sacred despite the fact that they’re only ‘recommendations.’ Even staring is considered a violation of personal space in Sweden so maintaining social distance is taken for granted even during regular times, totally contrary to the Israeli DNA with its culture of hugging and kissing.”
“An attempt to compare between two such different populations, and to think that what’s appropriate in Stockholm is appropriate for Tel Aviv is simply detached from reality and doomed to failure,” Prof. Balicer concluded.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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8 Responses
What are the arguments of the “group of Israeli doctors and scientists who signed an open letter on Sunday urging the government to refrain from imposing a lockdown”? I’m sure they also have informed ideas. I’m “at risk”, having just turned 72, עד מאה ועשרים שנה, and try to protect myself by rarely leaving my house. I say Psalm 91 many times a day emphasizing posukim 3,6,7 and 10, and hope that will help help protect me. Also, וַיֹּאמֶר אִם-שָׁמוֹעַ תִּשְׁמַע לְקוֹל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, וְהַיָּשָׁר בְּעֵינָיו תַּעֲשֶׂה, וְהַאֲזַנְתָּ לְמִצְוֺתָיו, וְשָׁמַרְתָּ כָּל-חֻקָּיו–כָּל-הַמַּחֲלָה אֲשֶׁר-שַׂמְתִּי בְמִצְרַיִם, לֹא-אָשִׂים עָלֶיךָ, כִּי אֲנִי יְהוָה, רֹפְאֶךָ.
Why did the Israeli doctors and scientists need to recommend the “Swedish model”? Their request to stop lockdowns and encourage herd immunity by protecting only the vulnerable is a 100% valid solution, in fact the only sensible thing to do at this point. Why would they mess up a solid, science-based recommendation with foolishness about Sweden? Are these doctors as foolish as the Israeli govt?
This is unfathomably ignorant. People in Israel are still dying. You cannot compare systems now. Do you evaluate the final results of a ballgame at the halftime?
This is rediculous.
In the USA there has been no correlation or a negative correlation between lockdowns and the spread of the virus. Lockdowns create economic disaster, which in addition to financial ruin, takes its toll in divorce, suicide and the like. In addition, while the infection rate is high in Israel, the hospitalization and mortality rates are very low.
I live in Jerusalem, Israel, and I pray that our leaders are not stupid enough to try another lockdown.
It’s unfortunate that the idea of the Swedish model is bashed without really addressing it’s advantages.
This is my opinion as physician, researcher working in clinical trials in an Israeli biotech company involved in COVID-19 trials. So, I know something about COVID-19. Since the start of the epidemic, I need to be up to date on the virus and the disease.
The Swedish model didn’t fail. It succeed, contrary to the media mantra. But it success contradicts the prevailing opinion.
Sweden is compared to its neighbors that actually made an early lockdown before even experiencing a real full-fledged first wave, like Israel. It’s a biaised comparison. When this countries opened up, like Israel, the pandemic restarted. In Danmark and Norway, new cases are increasing are or will overpassing the number of new cases in Sweden.
Sweden should be compared with countries like UK, Spain, Italy, Belgium and France which experienced a real full-fledged first wave.
And what do we learn from this comparison?
We learn that doing a lockdown or not, the course of the disease is not that different. Actually, There are much more deaths per capita in several of these countries which applied a lockdown.
half or the deaths if not more, in several of theses countris are deaths in nursing homes, for which the lockdown or absence thereof played no role.
Swedish epidemiologists (and the world-renown international epidemiologists that had the same opinion) understood what in Israel their are struggling to understand: be humble. In face of a pandemic with a flu-like virus having a infection fatality rate of 0.3-0.5% at most as it is widely estimated now, you cannot stop it, you can only buy time. But buying time involves depleting the people’s energy, strength, health (other aspects thereof) and destroying the economy, and unless a safe vaccine is quickly achieved. This last point is a big bet. If it takes a long time, you just destroy your economy for basically the same result because, one day or another, you will be obliged to open up, unless you want your country to go bankrupt. And that day, the infection re-start, nullifying all the efforts done before.
Also, adopting the Swedish model, would involve changes and improvements. The fact that some Israelis consider laws as “recommendations” not to be followed is rather a reason to avoid strict measures rather that trying to apply them with the appalling results we have seen these last months in Israel. It could also help applying a short lockdown on population at risk. But it’s to long to explain here.
But in Israel there is “massive” (false) positives and no increases in expected death. The lockdown will only delay the inevitable anyway. More tests at a high level of sensitivity = More positives. The more positives we have with low-level of sickness and death, the better!
Keep rules as they are, start school, lower the “infection positive threshold” and we’re out of this already.
And he misses the comparison between Sweden and Denmark. Sweden was isolated from the world that everyone was scared. Their death rate was because they didn’t do enough to protect at risk (80+ year olds). Belgium had one of the highest death/million in the the world and they had a VERY strick lockdown.
Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.
This article assumes that the reader has no commons sense. Sweden is so scary. We must stay home and shut down indefinitely. Such nonsense. Sweden didn’t lockdown and their economy suffered. “not even sparing themselves from a hit to their economy, which ensued anyway due to a spillover effect from the hit to the global economy”. So they should have been dumb like everyone else and killed their economy intentionally to make things even worse. Becoming more obvious forced lockdowns and shutdowns of everything do little to stem the virus which seems to take its natural course with little regard for government heavy handed “life saving” measures.
This is not a news story, it’s an editorial opinion piece, so why isn’t it signed? Aren’t we entitled to know whose opinion this is? Is it the YWN editors, or are they copying someone else’s opinion?
The truth is the Swedish model DID work. Their economy suffered much much less than comparable countries did, and their death rate is no higher than that of comparable countries, especially once you exclude the nursing homes in each country, which are a completely different issue.