Israeli Data Show School Openings Were a Disaster That Wiped Out Lockdown Gains
Source: The Daily Beast
Israel’s unchecked resurgence of COVID-19 was propelled by the abrupt May 17 decision to reopen all schools, medical and public-health officials have told The Daily Beast. The assessment of Israel’s trajectory has direct bearing on the heated debate underway in the United States between President Donald Trump, who is demanding a nationwide reopening of schools for what appear to be largely political reasons, and health authorities who caution it could put the wider population at risk.
Importantly, on May 17 in Israel it appeared the virus not only was under control, but defeated. Israel reported only 10 new cases of COVID-19 in the entire country that day. In the U.S., the debate often is about reopening schools where the disease is not only not in decline, but surging.
On Sunday, for instance, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, “There’s nothing in the data that suggests that kids being in school is in any way dangerous.” But that is not the case in Israel, where the data from June, the last month for which there is a full set of statistics, appear all too clear. The road from anti-coronavirus paradigm to rampant infection in this country of 9 million people followed two months of almost total lockdown. May 17 also was the day Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former rival Benny Gantz swore in their “corona emergency government,” whose sole declared purpose is to fight the spread of the virus. Netanyahu’s decree that the nation’s entire school system would reopen was a political flourish to signal everything was under control.
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On June 3, two weeks after schools opened, more than 244 students and staff were found to test positive for COVID-19. According to the education ministry, 2,026 students, teachers, and staff have contracted COVID-19, and 28,147 are in quarantine due to possible contagion. Just in the first two weeks of July, 393 kindergartens and schools open for summer programs have been shuttered due to cases of COVID-19.
On July 2, Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and health economist at the Federation of American Scientists, tweeted a chart showing Israel’s rate of infection surging past Europe and fast approaching the disastrous rate in the U.S., noting that it was exactly one month since the reopening of Israeli schools.
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/israeli-data-show-school-openings-were-a-disaster-that-wiped-out-lockdown-gains
We are totally unprepared to open schools here in the US.
Doing so will create super-spreader events in every town in the country.
School kids spread every other virus and disease, covid-19 will be no different.
= new reply since forum marked as read
If only Israel was warm and sunny. 
Cases actually spike as the weather gets hotter because people seal up indoors in confined air-conditioned spaces. That's what happened in Arizona, Texas and Florida.
area than the Middle East. Do I really need to? I guess
listening........ 
What happens if they open? That spike becomes a freaking rocket and all bets are off.
The hospitals will be overrun and capacity will hit fast and then the refrigerator trucks start rolling. Hell, the trucks will probably be rolling before schools open if things don't change soon.
This is just an alarming display of stupidity by the government.
All because one man and his dirty family of criminals.
This is going to be one bumpy road for the next year. 
