Israel Warns America: Don’t ‘Scapegoat’ The Unvaccinated For Rise In New COVID Cases
August 3, 2021 By CFT Team -- 16 Comments
A recent article in the Jerusalem Post outlined the “lessons” that the Israelis have allegedly learned from the “pandemic” which they want to share with Americans — the most important being that the majority of new COVID cases in Israel are occurring in people who are fully vaccinated — and the unvaccinated are not to blame:
August 3, 2021 By CFT Team -- 16 Comments
A recent article in the Jerusalem Post outlined the “lessons” that the Israelis have allegedly learned from the “pandemic” which they want to share with Americans — the most important being that the majority of new COVID cases in Israel are occurring in people who are fully vaccinated — and the unvaccinated are not to blame:
Israel has been one of the world leaders in vaccination efforts, a success that should show the way forward for many countries being assured that vaccines may help them return to “normal” during the pandemic. This is particularly true in the US, where the CDC has warned of a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” and experts are quoted saying that the “unvaccinated are the greatest threat to pandemic recovery.”
The tendency in the US to assign blame and find scapegoats is amplified by major media, which argue the pandemic is “spiraling out of control due to unvaccinated people.” Israel has a lesson here and it is a cautionary tale: Large numbers of vaccinated people are testing positive, apparently due to the new “Delta variant” that has impacted much of the world.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has said that “the scientific facts are clear: Those who get vaccinated get infected less; those who get vaccinated are less contagious. If you don’t get vaccinated, you put yourself and your loved ones in danger, especially the elderly.” On July 20, The Jerusalem Post reported that of the 143 hospitalized patients, 58% were fully vaccinated, 3% were partially vaccinated, and 39% were not vaccinated at all.
Israel is still very much trying to struggle with what to do next in an uncertain era. This is because the simplistic analysis that media have tried to shoehorn the pandemic into, quoting some experts, has sometimes been misleading.
There is no magic “return to normal.” Countries discover that just when they think cases are going down, they find them going up. Various measures, from social distancing to masks and lockdowns, have not always been effective. There are many cases to learn from, whether the experience of Australia – where a tough border policy initially appeared to enable “normal” life – to Sweden, where the choice not to lock down was slammed by outsiders but turned out to work fine. Big data tells us that the number of cases per million in Sweden, for instance, is not vastly different from Israel, where there were lockdowns.
The US has lurched from one extreme to another during the pandemic. The new zeal against the “unvaccinated” has sought to heap blame on a swath of the country where vaccination rates are slightly lower among adults for the spread of COVID. There are also calls for vaccine mandates in the military and angry articles asserting that unvaccinated areas are to blame for the spread of the Delta variant.
“Delta variant surges in US amid lagging vaccination,” reads one headline. One commentator, who is not a medical expert, has said on CNN that “we are going to move from a world of incentives to disincentives… This is no longer people just hurting themselves. It’s people incubating deadlier forms of the virus, more infectious forms of the virus, and exposing others to harm, especially children.”
In this line of argument, “vaccinated America” has “had enough” of the unvaccinated. “This was the week that vaccinated America started to get really fed up,” says Brian Stelter on CNN. He says there is a major divide in the US and that is why there is talk of “mandates,” apparently related to vaccines and masks.
Israel was able to achieve an impressive rollout of vaccinates – and not only to vaccinate much of the adult population, particularly the elderly who were vulnerable to COVID’s first waves, but also to achieve impressive vaccination levels in the military, where 83% were vaccinated by March and there were zero deaths.
Yet today in the Jewish state, despite all this and without being able to blame the “unvaccinated” – who make up only a small number of people – there is a rise in COVID cases beyond 1,000 a day to even 2,000, which is a lot for such a small country.
Despite major American media claiming that the rise in cases is primarily in states with low vaccination levels, in fact there are large numbers of cases in many states across the political and vaccination spectrum. This is because the US doesn’t want to have a healthy media discussion, with actual experts, about what is going on.
Some media in the US prefer a simple conclusion, blaming unvaccinated areas for why the pandemic isn’t over, and concluding that “in the United States, this pandemic could be almost over.” There’s no evidence it could be over, because with the exception of China, where there are almost no cases, most of the world is seeing the pandemic continue.
Countries with the highest vaccination rates, including the UK, Israel and the US, continue to have rising cases. High profile cases of vaccinated people getting COVID are beginning to break through into media, with cases like the UK’s health secretary. This has led to discussion about what these “breakthrough” cases are.
Back in April the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US said that “evidence suggests vaccinated people don’t spread COVID-19.” Articles put up headlines such as “yes, vaccines block most transmission of COVID-19,” as The National Geographic wrote. That was the situation in Israel as well: The number of new cases declined dramatically as the vaccine rollout increased.
Then, cases began to grow again in June. By July there were thousands a day. This is alleged to be due to the spread of the Delta variant, which has tragically and coincidentally come along just as everything was returning to “normal.” Now articles are explaining “why vaccinated people are getting breakthrough infections.” Mask guidelines have been reversed. The CDC agrees and has also reversed the indoor mask guidance. This has been surprising for some, and articles have asked “why are vaccinated people still testing positive for COVID-19,” as Fortune wondered.
Others point out that vaccines weren’t going to reduce new cases to zero and that if you have a highly vaccinated public, then some of those who are infected will be vaccinated. But this still leaves an elephant in the room when it comes to Israel’s experience.
According to NBC, “CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said recent studies had shown that those vaccinated individuals who do become infected with COVID have just as much viral load as the unvaccinated, making it possible for them to spread the virus to others. Based on that finding, Walensky said the CDC is also recommending that all school children wear masks in the fall.”
AS USUAL in the US, they are concerned that “messaging” might lead people to do something that is not in their best interest. This is why America also issued misleading mask guidance early in the pandemic when they claimed there were shortages of masks. People were told not to wear masks so that there wouldn’t be a shortage.
Now the question is about vaccination rates. “Within the administration, there had been concern that a focus on mask use could take away a key incentive for people to get vaccinated, which they believe was a factor for many people in choosing to get the shot,” says NBC.
The US has made another odd decision as well, which is worth quoting in full from the NBC report: “Just how widespread infections among the vaccinated are in the US is unknown. The CDC said in May it would stop monitoring the number of infections in vaccinated people aside from cases where a fully vaccinated person was hospitalized or died. Walensky said on Monday the agency has been tracking specific groups for breakthrough infections and would be reporting that data soon.
“The limited data so far has left doctors saying they feel they are flying blind in trying to assess the risk the new variant poses to their patients and relying on data out of other countries like Israel, where researchers released data last week showing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was just 39% effective against preventing infection from the delta variant and 91% effective at preventing severe disease.”
