This week Israel reopened its economy almost completely. It has been a slow, progressive and cautious process that has been delayed for a month. And it is not for less: it was the third total confinement of the country and the previous de-escalation had been a complete disaster.
Let us remember that the history of the pandemic in Israel is the history of a tremendously successful country in the containment of the first wave that was unable to reopen its economy without causing a terrible rebound. Prudence was more than justified. Nevertheless, the Israel of today had something that the Israel of a few months ago did not have: 46.2% of the vaccinated population completely.
The curve of hope
Therefore, the question was unavoidable: What will happen to the de-escalation? Would the curve behave in a similar way to that of the previous de-escalation, the one that originated the second wave? Now a graphic by Eran Segal, a researcher at the Weizmann Institute, allows us to compare both de-scaled by the basic rhythm of playback (the number of new cases generated by each infected on average) and the data is amazing.
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If we take as a reference the day on which the de-escalation began, we can see that the country’s numbers were considerably worse than after the previous confinement. In fact, throughout the month those numbers were consistently worse than the last wave. Until it happened what we were all waiting for: “a drop in the weekly rate of around 30%”.
And it is interesting not only because of the spectacular drop in the rate of reproduction recorded by Segal’s graph, but also because the situations are not perfectly comparable. Today, Israel has a much more open economy than then and, in addition, despite the confinement, the variants (more contagious) have begun to spread throughout the country. Y Still the numbers drop in the most hopeful way they could do.
Picture | Eran Segal
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