Corona crisis crunch

Yaakov Katz (“Politicizing a health crisis,” March 20) repeats a common misconception about coronavirus when he states that the restrictions enacted by the government “are not being done because the Health Ministry thinks it can stop the virus. The virus will still spread. What the government is trying to do is slow down the spread so Israel’s hospitals do not collapse like what is happening in Italy.”

But merely stretching out the cases over time, without stopping the spread of the virus, is not a sensible goal. For a little more effort, the same kinds of measures could stop the virus completely.

There are about 20,000 hospital beds in Israel, almost all of them occupied even in normal times, and about 5,000 ventilators and ICU beds. Even 20,000 cases of coronavirus at a given time (about 1,400 new cases per day) would require 4,000 hospitalizations, 1,000 of them in an ICU with ventilators, and would stretch hospitals to their limit. Beyond that number, many patients would die who could have been saved.

To keep the number of cases below this number for another year, until a vaccine is available, the number of new cases would have to double every five months, instead of every four days as it is doing now. Each infected person would have to infect only 1.03 other people on average, instead of 2.5 other people, as would occur without any special measures. The total number of cases over the next year would be about 500,000. But for a little extra effort, maybe you could reduce the number of people infected, on average, by each infected person, to 0.8. Then the number of new cases would fall by 20% every five days, instead of growing. The number of cases would fall to zero in only six months, and the total number of cases would be only 6,000.

This is not an impossible goal. China managed to do it in only three months, with only 0.01% of their population infected. We in Israel should do everything possible to achieve this.

MICHAEL GERVER Ra’anana

Much of the media is busy covering the perceived dangers of the new virus (“Coronavirus cases in Israel surge past 1,000,” March 23), but it is impossible for even the best epidemiologists, economists and climatologists to begin to estimate the overall impact of the Corona and the efforts to contain it.

The vastly reduced air travel and car mileage will lead to a significant reduction of air pollution worldwide. The World Health Organization has estimated that 4.5 million people die annually from causes directly related to air pollution. In Israel the number is 2,240. In the meantime, more than 15,000 people have died from Corona worldwide, including one in Israel. In addition, far fewer people will die or be maimed for life in car accidents.

Reduced air pollution may reverse global warming – will we soon have to confront rapid global cooling ? Will vast areas of ice cover North America and Europe as in the former ice ages? The activist climatologists have been calling desperately for a new world order with less consumer extravaganza. Their calls seem to have been answered – but is it for the betterment of the human species? Who can tell ? YIGAL HOROWITZ

Beersheba

In “Need to defer your mortgage payment?” (March 23), we read that due to the current crisis, the Bank of Israel is making it possible to defer mortgage payments for up to four months. As usual, however, the fine print is not very good at all.

Using the bank we have our mortgage with as an example, the bank explains – and I have no reason to believe they are not all the same in this regard – that 1) all payments missed need to be made up and