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Israel's Covid-19 Stats Are Stunning
(Times of Israel) David Horovitz - As of this writing, Israel, population 9.2 million people, has suffered 219 fatalities in the coronavirus pandemic. Of the nearly 16,000 confirmed cases, more than half have now recovered. Fewer than 100 Israelis are currently on ventilators. Compare those figures to other countries. Israel has 25 fatalities per million citizens - which puts us at about 50th in the world. Sweden, which chose a radically less interventionist approach, has about 10 times as many deaths as Israel - about 2,500 - in a population only slightly larger than ours at 10 million. Belgium, population 11 million, has over 7,500 fatalities - 34 times as many as Israel. Austria, with over 8.5 million people, has almost 600 dead. In the U.S., with a similar-sized Jewish community to Israel's, the most conservative estimate puts the death toll among Jews deep into four figures. Israel's leaders and authorities made decisions that its citizens generally heeded, that were designed to maximize the defense against a mysterious virus that disproportionately targeted the elderly - our parents, our pioneers. For now, the numbers and the comparisons suggest, that strategy has been remarkably effective. The writer is founding editor of the Times of Israel.