Working In The US During Corona Lockdown
I’m here in the US working for two weeks now, going back to Israel next week. My original return flight was connecting through San Francisco but El Al cancelled all flights from the West coast last week as they’ve been scaling back on flights. My I had to rebook my flight therefore to connect through JFK. I get that most of their US business goes through JFK so they decided to keep that location open, but I’m very much not enthused about flying through the epicentre of the pandemic in the US. I just read today, in fact, that a bunch of chabad passengers flying back to Israel, on El Al, from JFK had been quarantined a week ago and now 15 of them have tested positive for the virus. Hopefully things will have quieted down a bit by next week.
I am staying in touch with Israel by phone and WhatsApp. I still get WhatsApp updates from the city, from the schools, and from the shul. In fact, I just got a text message from the city saying that there were two new exposures in the city of Ra’anana, and that we should check the details, and that if anyone was at those locations at those times, they should self-quarantine and submit the quarantine report to the ministry of health. So I clicked on the supplied link in the text, which took me to the Israeli Ministry of Health website which has a map showing every single exposure in the country (they “time out” or disappear by default after two weeks I think, when the infection risk from that exposure would go away, but i think you can select the time frame you want on the controls on the map). Here’s what it looks like for the entire country:
Here it is zoomed up just on my city of Ra’anana – you can see the two pins near the top-middle of the screen – those are the two new Ra’anana exposures:
And here’s when I clicked on one of the pins. It gives the address of the exposure (where the person who was found later to have tested positive for the virus was), it gives the time that he/she was at the location, and it gives any additional comments. In this case it says something like (my translation): “mincha services at the shul on HitHadar Street behind the Bank HaPoalim.”
So basically, a guy davened (prayed) mincha (afternoon service) at that shul behind the bank, between 1:40PM and 2:00PM on March 11. If you were there at that time, you need to fill out and submit the form and self-quarantine.
Luckily, no one in our family was there. Or at the other pin, just to the left, which was says a person was at the Zara store in the Ra’anana mall between 8:15 and 9PM on the same day. Luckily we weren’t there either.
By now, Israel has entirely closed the borders to any non-citizens or non-residents. I will be able to get back in (to Israel), but I will have to self-quarantine at home for two weeks. The country is forcing every single person entering the country from anywhere in the world to self quarantine for two weeks immediately upon entry, regardless of symptoms or exposure history. And remember that group of 15 chabad passengers who tested positive that I mentioned earlier? Luckily, since they had flown in from a known hot-spot, the government didn’t let them self-quarantine – they were all kept in one of the “corona hotels” the defense ministry is running for people in isolation who have or have high risk of having the virus. So at least they didn’t infect anyone else after they returned from Israel. I think that deserves some contemplation. Can you imagine if in the US the government forced US citizens into quarantine in “hotels” like that? I’m not sure it would go over so well. I’m not saying what’s right or wrong, just noting some cultural differences. Maybe it will indeed come to that, but hopefully not.