Senior health official tells TV restrictions on public ‘crazy and unnecessary’

A senior Health Ministry official speaking to Channel 12 news criticizes the severity of the restrictions his office has championed during the coronavirus crisis, and blames the “anxiety-prone” personalities of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the ministry’s Director-General Moshe Bar Siman-Tov.

The unnamed official says the precautions taken by the government in its choice of restrictions were “crazy and unnecessary.” Israel “should have imposed less severe limitations, and then today we may have had 400 dead and 1,000 on ventilators, but unfortunate as that may be, it would be preferable to the terrible harm done to the economy.”

The official asserts the government should immediately bring all Israelis back to work “under social distancing guidelines and hygiene practices.”