Transcript: Israeli Defense Minister Shares Coronavirus Response Strategies

My name is Naftali Bennett and I'm Minister of Defense of the State of Israel. I want to share with you the single most important insight of the entire Corona epidemic. The most important thing, more than general social distancing, more than testing, testing, testing, more than anything else, is to separate old people from younger people. The single most lethal combination is when grandma hugs her grandson. Why is that? Because corona is a unique virus in the sense that it's way more lethal for old people than for young people. In many countries, zero young people died. In countries that many people died, you have 0% or 0.1% of folks under the age of 30 or 20. Whereas old people over the age of 80 and 70, one out of five, one out of seven of them that get the virus die. So what we need to do over the next period of time is take care of grandma and grandpa but from far away lots of whatsapps and skype and you name it Bring them food clean the box before you leave and then they take it in their house. But do not enter the house, do not hug them because you're risking them. Finally, people ask me, so will the old people have to be isolated forever? The answer is no. What will happen over the next few months, gradually the rest of the population, want it or not, the rest of the population is going to get the coronavirus. Most, the overwhelming majority of people that will get the coronavirus won't even know it. It'll take three or four weeks. They won't know they have the virus. And by the end of those four weeks, they'll be immune. It will start with a tenth of a percent, one percent, five percent, twenty percent. When it reaches just about 60-70 percent of the population that will be immune, the epidemic is over, and then grandma and grandpa can come out. It might take a month, it might take two or three months, it might take a bit more, but that's the plan. Good luck, take care of grandma and grandpa, don't get near them.