The spreading fear of coronavirus prompted the Health Ministry and the Central Elections Committee to take unprecedented, special measures on Election Day. Not only so that thousands of Israelis who are currently under self-imposed quarantine at home could vote, but also due to the fear that false claims and fake news about coronavirus patients would spread, paralyzing polling stations and keeping the public away from the ballots in neighborhoods or areas where it would be claimed that there were coronavirus patients .
On Sunday, we got a glimpse of this and how easy it is to spread unfounded panic when two floors of a mall in Givatayim in central Israel had to be temporarily evacuated after an Israeli man who had returned from a Italy came to a health clinic there to be tested. The floors occupied by the clinic were then evacuated – without any medical justification and categorically in breach of the clear guidelines of the Health Ministry.
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Nonetheless, the global concern over coronavirus and the special measures taken by the Health Ministry have demonstrated once again how the safeguarding of public health can be undermined and fatally damaged by rumors and the spread of false information (and this is an ancient phenomenon that significantly predates social media). In addition, it also shows just how much the protection of public health is based to a large extent on social cohesion, the public's sense of equality, justice and fairness, and a citizen's personal commitment towards the rest of society, no less than it is on new medications, the number of hospital beds, doctors and nurses.
Social cohesion and mutual responsibility may sound like anarchic terms which supposedly have nothing to do with the society or the era that we are living in Israel, but all the measures taken by the Health Ministry are based on and rely to a great extent on social solidarity – far more than they are on enforcement, policing and coercion. Thus, for example, the Health Ministry directive to thousands of Israelis returning from countries affected by coronavirus to remain in isolation at home for two weeks depends on self-discipline and solidarity with Israeli society, as is the instruction to these Israelis to first call the emergency services before going straight to hospital or the health clinic in the event of a deterioration in their health.
The efforts against fake news must be systematic, continuous and constant, not only at a time when the state is trying to contain the spread of a new, unknown disease, such as coronavirus. For years, for example, erroneous and false information have circulated that vaccinations against infectious, serious diseases like measles are dangerous and ineffective – false claims made even by a handful of doctors. Despite this, up until now, the Health Ministry has not taken enough action to fight this phenomenon, which has led to a decrease in the vaccination rate, accelerating the spread of measles in Israel in the last two years.
The Health Ministry has also chalked up an absolute failure in their efforts to get doctors themselves to vaccinate against the seasonal 'flu, for which, unlike coronavirus, there is a vaccine that is updated every year, is very successful in preventing infection and almost entirely prevents incidences of death from the disease in patients who have had the shot. Health Ministry figures show that less than half of hospital staff have the annual 'flu shot, even though it is a directive from the ministry, and it could cut the infection rate of high-risk patients (patients who are hospitalized and whose chances of dying from seasonal 'flu are very high), the hospital staff themselves and their families. The Health Ministry's failure on this issue has undoubtedly had an impact on the public and the public's perception of the importance of having the shot.
Throughout human history, the primal fear of epidemics has always given rise to concerns of manifestations of racism, xenophobia and social chaos. This was the case about a year ago following the outbreak of measles where one senior Health Ministry official did not hesitate at a Knesset committee meeting to declare that the spread of the disease was also due to the fact that the Arab population in Israel was not vaccinating – a "fact" that quickly turned out to be completely unfounded and the exact opposite of the reality: on the whole, the rate of vaccinations in the Arab sector in Israel is particularly high.
Social cohesion, which is vital to help contain coronavirus, can also help reduce incidents of false accusations of minority populations spreading disease. These accusations are usually the result of ignorance, racism, and xenophobia – which are no less dangerous to human society than the outbreak of diseases like coronavirus, and furthermore, such false accusations in and of themselves could do serious harm to the state's ability to deal with new epidemics.
