COMMENT | I just received a video this morning featuring an Israeli Minister making an argument supporting "mitigation" as a strategy for combating Covid-19. He explained that since mortality rates are lower than one percent for the young, society just needs to isolate those above 70 years of age and allow the infection to spread through the rest of the population.

After that, about 80 percent of the total population has recovered from being infected by Covid 19, one has herd immunity in the population and this will protect the older members from getting infected.

There are many misconceptions underpinning this line of argument. The first is that the one percent mortality rate for Covid-19 infection is only obtained when the infected patients receive optimum treatment. We now know from the experience of Wuhan and Italy that approximately 10 percent to 15 percent of the Covid infected patients develop respiratory difficulty and suffer a drop in their blood oxygen levels.

Many of them can be managed by giving them oxygen. However five percent of all Covid patients deteriorate even with oxygen therapy, and they require intubation and ventilation in an intensive care unit (ICU). Only when you can provide this level of care to all patients who need it, can you achieve mortality rates of about one percent...