Yom Shnee, Monday
13 Tevet, 5781
December 28, 2020
Photo of the Evening
The Utter Absurdity of the “Lockdown”
Look closely of this photo taken of the Ayalon Freeway in Tel Aviv and feeder streets yesterday evening at 7:00 pm.
The above photo was taken 2 hours after the lockdown began yesterday—at a time when no one was supposed to be more than 100 meters from their home. Every road in Tel Aviv was clogged with cars–no one was obeying the lockdown.
And no one is obeying it this morning. See my description below of going to get a Corona test one hour ago (at 7 am).
The News on the Israeli Street
The daily Corona (Covid-19) update . . .
Here are the numbers over the last 24 hours (from 8 am Sunday until 8 am today):
401,470 Israelis have been confirmed with the virus since the pandemic began last March.
There are 2,806 newly confirmed cases.
587 are in critical condition—an increase of 3
139 of the most critically ill are on ventilators—an increase of 6
3,226 have died–an increase of 16
There are currently 34,232 active Corona cases in Israel.
Well, 2,800 newly confirmed cases is certainly better than 4,400 yesterday, but this lower number is almost certainly a factor of a reduced number of people being tested on Shabbat.
In the meantime, there is widespread unrest in the business community here as bankruptcies are driving many markets, shops, and shopping centers out of business. A number of government leaders have declared that they will not enforce the lockdown. For example, the mayors of many Israeli-Arab cities said yesterday that they will not enforce the restriction that restaurants cannot sell takeaway food.
No end to police corruption . . .
The three detectives who many believe are guilty of murder in the death of Ahudya Sendak have now concocted another story.
Now the detectives claim that they thought the car carrying our young men was full of Palestinian terrorists.
This claim is too laughable to even refute.
Is this the end of Benny Gantz? . . .
We certainly hope so.
Not only do current election polls have his once mighty Kahol Lavan party fading into oblivion, but also his legal troubles persist.
Remember the allegations made during the last election campaign by Nava Jacobs? She claimed that 40 years ago, Gantz sexually harassed her in ways that we will not describe here. She also claimed that she had corroborating witnesses.
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At the time. Gantz dismissed her claims as lies, and said he would not respond.
Guess what? Jacobs has taken her case to court, and it is expected to be heard in March.
Yesterday, Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court Judge Yair Dlogin ordered that Gantz enter into mediation with Jacobs to resolve the suit before it comes to trial.
TODAY’S BLOG
A Personal Corona Story
As you do not know, your humble servant along with his wife and daughter have been in a Corona “quarantine” (Hebrew=bidud) for the last 7 days.
We are in the bidud because my wife visited her extremely ill mother in the hospital 9 days ago, only to discover the next day that the woman in the bed beside her mother (4 women in each room) had tested positive for Corona as had her daughter and their caregiver.
We were subsequently informed by the Health Ministry that we had to remain in quarantine for the next 14 days along with my mother-in-law’s caregiver.
However, there is a way to shorten the quarantine to 10 days which we are pursuing.
First, we had to have a Corona test the day after we received the call–we took the test and received a negative result the next day.
Next, we had to arrange for another Corona test after 8 days which we did with considerable effort (it’s very difficult these days–it took 3 hours–to get our health provider Kupat Cholim on the phone), but we finally received one for 7:45 am this morning. We were told we would be first in line.
The testing center is located in the underground garage of the BIG Shopping Center at the south exit from Ashdod, so we left the house at 7:15 am to account for the Corona checkpoint near the entrance to BIG at which police are supposed to be enforcing the lockdown. We expected traffic to be light because of the lockdown.
It turned out that traffic was just as heavy as usual, and there was no checkpoint.
We arrived at 7:30, and there were already 10 cars in front of us–the testing is “drive-through”; no one gets out of the car. In typical Israeli fashion, there was no adhering to reservations whatsoever, so we just had to wait.
Fortunately, the nurse testees beat back the dozens of Israelis who came in behind us and tried to use their cars to cut in line. In Israel, a car is a weapon.
The view from our car–we were next in line. You can barely see the tester in a plastic suit on the right side of the car looking in.
Finally, at about 8:00 we came to the front of the car line.
The testing went quickly: one swab for saliva in the mouth, then one swab in each nostril. Fortunately, this particular tester did not try to swab our brain (one common complaint is how deeply into the nostril the swab goes).
At 8:05 we were out of the garage and on our way home. Now we are waiting for the results which will probably come tonight. If they are negative, we can fill out a Health Ministry form, submit it, and receive a text from the Health Ministry letting us out of the quarantine tomorrow.
That is if all goes well.
However, in this supposedly high-tech country, nothing ever does.
Already this morning we have discovered that my mother-in-law’s caregiver never received a Corona test at the hospital, and then when she had one two days later, it was lost. She is getting another one today. In the last few days, she has been exhibiting symptoms of Corona.
Then we got news that our daughter’s fiance who received a Corona test two days ago and was promised a result in 24 hours now has to wait 4 more days to get his result (he is in his own bidud in Tel Aviv).
And so it goes in Israel on a sunny Monday morning.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.