The R Number

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13 Av 5780

3 August 2020

The News on the Israeli Street

Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .

Sderot: the point of attack again by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza.

It remains uncertain how many missiles were fired last night out of Gaza toward Sderot at 8:59 pm, but here are the remains of an Iron Dome interceptor that destroyed one:

The interceptor fragments hit the back of this car that was parked at a drive-in in Sderot.

By the way, we heard two explosions here in Ashdod about 20 miles away from Sderot at 8:59 pm.

Other terror in the last 24 . . .

While the events were unfolding on the Gaza border, a terror cell coming from Syria attempted to plant a bomb along the Syrian-Israeli border fence. Here is a photo of the terrorists moving back into the DMZ after planting the bomb:

The 4 man terror cell moving back across the DMZ toward Syria.

Here’s what happened exactly one second later:

The 4 terrorists were eliminated.

You can see the short video of the incident: Click the video of the terrorists being eliminated here.

The event on the Syria border throws into sharper relief what happened this past week on the Lebanese border where a Hezbollah terror cell was permitted to return to Lebanon unharmed. Why were the terrorists killed in one incident and not in the other?

Simply because the IDF is afraid of Hezbollah.

The daily Corona update . . .

As of 8 am this morning (Monday): There are 72,815 confirmed cases—an increase of 597 since this time yesterday 

45,677 of these confirmed cases have recovered—an increase of 575

342 are in critical condition–an increase of 14

98 of the most critically ill are on ventilators—an increase of 2

536 have died–an increase of 10

There are 27,138 active cases.

As of 2 days ago, 239 people had died in the second Corona wave which began at the beginning of June:

13 died who were under the age of 65

27 died who were between 65-74

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77 died who were between 75-84

122 died who were over the age of 85

111 who died were men; 128 were women.

A follow up to yesterday’s blog about the “Shaked Law” . . .

Yesterday’s blog discussed how Ayelet Shaked will be proposing a new law on Wednesday in the Knesset–a law that would curb the power of the Israel Supreme Court to declare Knesset laws invalid. 

As was pointed out yesterday, the provisions of the law are ones that every single political party on the right has long supported especially Shas, United Torah Judaism, Yisrael Beiteinu, and Likud. 

So what has been the response since yesterday?

Both Shas and United Torah Judaism have said said they will vote against the law because they want to hold the Coalition together. 

Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beiteinu says that his party will vote against the law because it is a “distraction.”

Members of Likud are saying they will vote against the law because “it does not go far enough” (total nonsense). 

In short, the Shaked law is going nowhere.

TODAY’S BLOG

The R Number

Suddenly this morning, everyone in the government is touting the R number to show that Israel is slowly emerging from the second Corona wave and to show that Israel needs to immediately open up again.

What is the R number?

It is the “effective reproduction number“, in other words, the number of people that a person infected with Corona infects. According to our Corona czar and the Health Ministry, this R number is now less than 1.

Your humble servant assumes that you, dear reader, are asking the same question that I am. How in the world can anyone possibly know how many people that an infected person is infecting?

They cannot. 

So how do “experts” come up with a number?

From Wired magazine:

[The main way] is by monitoring hospitalization and death figures to get a sense of how many people have the virus – but the problem with this is that, since the virus’s incubation period is so long, it only gives an accurate picture of a few weeks ago. To check transmission rates in a more accurate way, scientists at Imperial College London in the UK have started testing randomized 25,000 groups of the population to see how many are ill.

Using the R number here in Israel is especially absurd when one considers the inconsistent nature of testing here. Take my home city of Ashdod for example where the testing center has been open 1 day a week during the last month–and on that one day hundreds of people try to get tested. Who knows how many people here in the city with the virus have been unable to get tested?

There is no randomized testing in Israel at all. 

One is forced to conclude that the Israeli R number is merely a made-up number designed to facilitate political decisions—especially in light of the continuing increase in critically ill patients and Corona patients who have died.