From Ian:
Coronavirus Is Bringing Israel Together — and Help to the World
Finding the Silver Lining in COVID-19
Coronavirus Is Bringing Israel Together — and Help to the World
I’ve been flooded by examples of Israelis helping to buy tons of flowers from private farmers that would otherwise get dumped in the garbage. I’ve seen Israelis support small businesses from pet stores to herb stores, to help them from collapsing financially.
I’ve seen teenagers and students deliver groceries and medicine to senior citizens homes, right to their doors. NGOs have established ‘hot lines’ for emotional support, and privately owned Israeli businesses have donated laptops and computers to impoverished children.
And I’ve also witnessed Israeli families “adopt” Holocaust survivors, ensuring they have everything they need.
This deep sense of Israeli solidarity is heavily integrated into the current crisis as well as other life-threatening scenarios. It is who we are as people. It is based on the values our country was founded upon. It is something we will always cherish and pass on to our children.
And there’s another resemblance between the coronavirus crisis and terror attacks on Israeli soil. In both cases, we have a strong army. It is not only an army of jets, tanks, and submarines. It’s an army that first and foremost is based on brilliant minds, devoted spirits, who work around the clock to ensure the safety of Israel. It’s an army of researchers who spend long hours at scientific labs, searching for the best vaccine for the virus.
It’s an army of innovative minds who develop apps and sites for the individuals and families locked in communities, making information more accessible for them. It’s an army of teachers who keep our kids studying with long distance technologies, who don’t forget they are educators before anything else.
The best thing? These minds are an asset for the world. Israel is working closely with other countries to promote required solutions, not only on a vaccine for coronavirus, but on many aspects of daily life affected by this new enemy.
Today more than ever, please recognize that Israel is a strong power, not only militarily, but even more importantly, in the capacity of its people and the values they represent.
It’s time to look at Israel in a different way.
Finding the Silver Lining in COVID-19
It is often the challenging times that we remember the best — and learn from the most. They are also our proudest moments, if we rose to the occasion, and our most shameful moments, if we failed the test before us.Nobel Laureate: Why Coronavirus Crisis May Be Over Sooner Than Many Think
For our kids, who now have lots of time with mom and dad, they may remember this time as the most memorable of their lives, the most fun. The time they were able to be with their family.
As parents, we may learn that the most valuable gift we can give our kids is not a new iPad or a cell phone, but rather an hour of undivided attention, an hour of fun adventure walking in a park or having a picnic, an hour of listening to what is truly important — what is on their mind and in their heart at this moment.
Children also rise to the occasion. During the Holocaust, it was the children who crawled through the sewers and the small cracks in the walls to escape the ghettos, and bring food back to their families. During the pogroms, it was the 13-year-old kids who made their way to America and worked in sweat shops to earn money to bring their families to America. During war time, it has been the 18-year olds who saved the world from tyranny. King David was a boy when he defeated Goliath.
Looking back, we may find that our kids are more resilient than we would have ever thought.
As we “teach our children diligently,” as the Torah commands, and they rise to the occasion as they often do, we may ask ourselves: Are we giving them the message that they need — or are we entrusting that to a school system to feed them, educate them, and teach them their values?
Stanford biophysicist and Nobel laureate Michael Levitt says that based on how the COVID-19 crisis has played out in multiple countries, the threat is less severe than the media has portrayed it to be and might be over sooner than most think. “The real situation is not as nearly as terrible as they make it out to be,” Levitt says, and, in the end, “we’re going to be fine.”
Levitt, who accurately predicted the slowdown of coronavirus cases in China, has been making the rounds with various media outlets to discuss his findings on the most recent data from nearly 80 countries involving the global pandemic. Like several other experts, Levitt maintains that the threat of COVID-19 is less severe than many reports make it appear.
In a report published by the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Levitt assured the public that the world, and the U.S., are going to survive COVID-19, and that, as has occurred in countries first hit by the pandemic, the cases of the virus will begin to decline more rapidly than some are projecting.
Levitt, the L.A. Times’ Joe Mozingo notes, “correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its coronavirus outbreak long before many health experts had predicted” and now “foresees a similar outcome in the United States and the rest of the world.”
In a report published on February 1, Levitt predicted with remarkable accuracy how China’s cases would end up, saying that around 80,000 would contract the disease and among those around 3,250 would die. Mozingo notes that as of March 16, China, which has nearly 1.4 billion people, reported a total of just 80,298 cases and 3,245 deaths related to the virus and the number of new cases has slowed down to around 25 per day.
Levitt says that after studying data from 78 countries, he sees a similar pattern. As occurred in China in February, the rate of case increases will begin to decline, signaling the downside of a spread curve. “What we need is to control the panic,” Levitt told the paper.
The important metric, Levitt explained, is the number of new cases, not the total number of cases. The new cases data allows one to see more clearly the rate of spread. He also stressed that only when the virus is not being detected will it spread “exponentially.” When countries are testing and responding aggressively, the growth rate tends to decrease significantly.



























