Israeli Nobel Laureate Believes Israel Will not Have More Than 10 Wuhan Flu Deaths
Jose Nino
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Less than 10 people will die in Israel as a result of the Wuhan virus, Nobel Prize laureate Michael Levitt asserted on Wednesday, March 18, 2020 as the Israeli government continued imposing further restrictions on the general population.
Levitt believes that fears in Israel over the Wuhan virus were blown out of proportion and that the number of cases in the country was dubious due to reporting variances. “I will be surprised if the number of deaths in Israel surpasses 10,” he stated, noting that the Jewish state was “not on the world map for the disease.”
Levitt has gained international attention in recent weeks thanks to his successful prediction of the rate of infection slowing down in mainland China last month.
By looking at statistics on the infection rates and the number of deaths, Levitt identified a limited growth pattern, indicating that instead of the infection rate increasing exponentially, it has started tailing off.
An American-British-Israeli biophysicist who received the 2013 Nobel Prize for chemistry, Levitt predicted earlier this week that China will have no new infections by March’s end.
Levitt claims that the number of Wuhan virus cases in Israel is very small on a global scale.
So far, Israel has reported 427 cases of the Wuhan virus since the pandemic started.
“I don’t believe the numbers in Israel, not because they’re made up, but because the definition of a case in Israel keeps changing and it’s hard to evaluate the numbers that way,” Levitt stated.
“There is a lot of unjustified panic in Israel. I don’t believe the numbers here, everything is politics, not math,” he remarked.
“I will be surprised if number of deaths in Israel surpasses ten, and even five now with the restrictions.”
Levitt believes that it is almost impossible to do country by country comparisons, because each government is recording cases in a different matter. He asserted that, “South Korean tests are 10 times more sensitive than in Italy. If Italy measured cases like Korea, there would have been 10 times more cases.”
Instead, he believes that the best way to assess the figures was through the number of deaths reported. As of now, Israel has no registered Wuhan virus deaths.
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