redstate | Tel Aviv University Professor Isaac Ben-Israel is a prominent Israeli
mathematician, analyst, and former general and is considered to be
highly credible, but he is not a medical expert.
Tel Aviv
University Professor Isaac Ben-Israel is the chair of the school’s
Securities Studies program, the chairman of the National Council for
Research and Development and also serves on the research and development
advisory board for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. He appeared on an
Israeli television program (Hebrew) earlier this week to discuss his latest project. The Times of Israel reported on this story.
According to The Times, Ben-Israel plotted the rates of new
infections in nearly a dozen countries including: U.S., U.K., Sweden,
Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany, Spain, Singapore, and
Taiwan. He concluded the following:
Simple statistical analysis demonstrates that the spread of COVID-19 peaks after about 40 days and declines to almost zero after 70 days — no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it.
Analyzing the growth and decline of new cases in countries around the world, showed repeatedly that “there’s a set pattern” and “the numbers speak for themselves.”
So,
Ben-Israel claims that a country that has taken extraordinary measures
to contain the virus vs. a nation like Sweden, which has been relatively
lax, will follow a fixed pattern. The virus will peak and recede “in the exact same way.
In the exact, same, way. His graphs show that all countries
experienced
seemingly identical coronavirus infection patterns, with the number of
infected peaking in the sixth week and rapidly subsiding by the eighth
week.”
The following comes from a translation of an interview Ben-Israel gave to Israeli media outlet Mako which was obtained by Townhall’s Marina Medvin:
It is a fixed pattern that is not dependent on freedom or quarantine. There is a decline in the number of infections even [in countries] without closures, and it is similar to the countries with closures.
Expansion begins exponentially but fades quickly after about eight weeks. I have no explanation. There are is [sic] kinds of speculation: maybe it’s climate-related, maybe the virus has its own life cycle.
When asked about the high morbidity rate in Italy, Ben-Israel replied,
“The health system in Italy has its own problems. It has nothing to do
with coronavirus. In 2017 it also collapsed because of the flu.”
