Rejuvenation COVID-19 Video Special: Interview with Efrat Mayor Oded Revivi

[Music] a beautiful day in the Land of Israel March 29th 2020 the start of another week the fourth day of Nisan 5780 and I managed to grab a few minutes between a very in a very very busy schedule with my very own mayor of the frats mayor all dead Raviv II who is gonna share with us for the next few minutes the challenges the unexpected challenges of dealing as a mayor in a situation that we'd have no precedent for so first of all dead thanks so much for joining me this morning I know you have a staff meeting in a few minutes and you go to the library every day and read to the kids on zoom' the kids in Efrat so I really appreciate the time so start of a new week what's going on well you know it's a bit funny that you say it's a starting of you because I don't quite recall that we ended the last week if there wasn't Shabbat and it's almost like a snow event that it's an ongoing event that the challenges just keep on coming and as the minutes or as the hours go by there's no differentiation whether it's a weekend Shabbat Sunday or preparing for her and we thought in our house that I will be this year the most repairs professor because everybody's at home and we'll have a lot of time to actually clean the house and get all the things that we wanted but the truth of the matter is that I personally find myself working way harder because it's just ongoing a Friday night five minutes after lighting candles I get a notification that we've got another two positive checks in the front so you just leave everything in you now start dealing with these two new people who have been identified as sick and all the implications so it's an ongoing challenge it's not really a beginning of a new week even though it is Sunday morning and definitely challenging times completely unexpected and if you put on top of that all the headlines all the events that are happening within the political sphere within Israeli politics so there's really never a dull moment that's for sure that's what I say to people a lot goes not in Israel no one ever dies of boredom though that is like not even on the list of dangers so among the things that has put it fraud on the map and you've worked very hard in the last few years to put a fraud in the map in many ways as a green city it's a city that really got a top educational system here in Bush it's gone what you didn't probably want is to see a fraud very high on the list of places in Israel with people who have the virus so what what happened here in a fraud that caused that to put us on that list oh hi well there is a bit of injustice with that list and I'll tell you why and what happened was when we started hearing about this virus everybody was puzzled everybody was unaware as to how to deal with it and what is supposed to happen and within I think a day or two since the virus actually hitting us and knocked on my door a neighbor of yours are on Adler and it comes to me he says to me the following thing it says that you have to understand people who feel sick to have the symptoms they call them individual files they try to convince them that they're eligible to have the test then yes in order to go and actually precede the tests on that specific individual and then they take it to the lab they wait for the results and then the results come back to the actual person who was suffering I think is one of the top paramedics came again Zebina doorman has been for many many years so if he has information he'll patient yeah I believe that I believe you know personally since he was running around in diapers my kids but was in my house a lot basically he said to me or dad I've got an idea let's train 10 volunteers I'm again the widow to actually be able to do those tests I need from you a car that will able to maneuver the volunteers and I need the freezer to keep the kids and so they'll be on standby I said our and it makes sense no problem you've got it within 12 hours we actually trained those 10 volunteers we put we designated a car for them at the end of the day we didn't need to designate the freezer because we weren't given any kids to actually stay in the front but with this unit what we managed to do is actually proceed the tests were any quicker than any city in Israel so even though if rotters go today 13,000 residents 40,000 residents the amount of tests that we were able to carry out was almost the equivalent number of a city which is a hundred times bigger than us Jerusalem so when the results came out all of the sudden everybody was shocked Wow how come a fraud is number one of the list it's not that people here were reckless it's not that people here took the instructions it is because we managed to test the people quicker we managed to put more people in quarantine quicker and that in a way thanks to our own out there and those volunteers we actually managed to a I would say oppress the case of people catching the virus and I saw him Friday and he says to me look at the statistics why what would have happened here if we wouldn't have had that protocol here and that's why we hit the charts number one but we have a reason to explain it and you know what coming back to your question yes we're proud to be the number one city because at the end of the day it means that we did hear something that afterwards was adopted in a way by him again the reader don't they did actually train those volunteers but they invented the drive-through who test places where people who don't feel well actually can't come into a dry fruit they get tested and then they get the results so we had a home delivery the Minister of Health imitated it to a drive-thru all right as you know my husband's a physician he gets the updates from the Ministry of Health every single morning what's going on and that's exactly why the statistics are skewed because there are a lot of people who are sick who don't know they're sick and because not enough testings been done and so what you're saying makes a lot of sense that if I did a lot of testing and there are four we've revealed who really is sick while in most of the country there is kind of a ticking especially in certain neighborhoods there's kind of a ticking thing happening well we're only going to know I understand also in places like East Jerusalem among the Arab population in places like Bnei Brak people are not willing to say that they're sick there's like a social stigma and what we have here in a fraud is people not just willing to say that they're sick but they're giving a their knees because they want to make sure that anybody who saw them or anything to do with them knows that they were sick and that you know they should go into quarantine to be careful which is pretty outstanding I don't think everybody would do that in every town again it is also one of the things that were the leading cities to actually do because when we understood that people are getting positive results nobody knows that information the answer is given directly to person who was tested because of a privacy policy we are not revealed to that information and then we started asking those people who are who we knew through different and mechanisms that we have about the year and a half ago we actually set a special teams in every neighborhood of volunteers to help in a case of the crisis we didn't anticipate that this will be the crisis that will happen but they became Excel for these teams of volunteers in every single neighborhood in order to convey information but in also to receive information and they started reporting listen businesses came back to the neighborhood and he's been identified sick so we use this connection and we ask those people to sign a disclosure that they are giving up their privacy they're willing to put out their name in public typically but we went to stage forward we actually trained again another group of volunteers to do questioning to those people who were identified as sick in order to publish their route as to where their whereabouts were now again because we realized that the Ministry of Health was collapsing under pressure they didn't have the time to publish the routes they were very efficient in the first 10 15 people are diagnosed a sick but when it became over a hundred you saw that it takes 3-4 days until you actually get groups of the people no we decided that to us Friday morning by a blockade network by the time Shabbat came in we had already the list of all 40 people who were sick we had their routes we published it on the website which meant I don't know how effective it is because at the end of the day we understand that the virus can be anywhere but it was another anchor of certainty that people can say oh there's somebody who's managing what's happening here there's somebody who's questioning it somebody who's giving out information and even if it's irrelevant information what we saw that it does to the general public was extremely efficient now these two protocols that we have invented more or less in a front where two days later adopted by the Ministry of Interior they took a document that we wrote which was about a seven each sheet of different in lessons and protocols that we've invented and they basically sent it out to the whole country to all the different cities towns and saying follow this protocol we widely suggest an advice it makes sense and sure enough last week if we weren't having enough on our plate both me and you described the CEO of the council we're getting phone calls from all over the country of different mayors how did you do that what is this can we have your a disclosure of information and what you wrote down and in that respect there was a lot of satisfaction seeing other people throwing in our footsteps so again to your question we were leading also in that so first of all I'm very proud of that but also it's something I see it it's very Israeli that in the time of crisis let's say a war where sometimes the leadership is overwhelmed or isn't doing necessarily what should be done because they've got so much going on we have the little people doing it and you're seeing it all over Israel the laboratories the different army units I found out one of the things that came out a couple of days ago is that there's Israel is developing respirators from from very simple parts respirators it can be put together quickly and I knew about that a couple days ago because the neighbor of one of my son's is the head of that army unit that intelligence unit and his guys have been working on it so what we're seeing is a lot of initiatives that are happening all over Israel maybe because some of the usual bureaucracy has been kicked aside because no one's got time for that anymore and the inventiveness and the creativity and the need to solve problems that is like hardwired into us Israelis I think you're seeing coming out in all kinds of ways and it's fantastic that on the level of the mayor's you're able to take the burden off the national government and figure out what's happening here but on the day to day of the things that a mayor has to do haven't gone away just because we have sick people so usually before Passover for example the garbage cans are overflowing anyhow before Passover because everybody is cleaning their house again ready so how are you managing to keep the city clean how are you managing to keep the city functioning given the fact also that a lot of the people that work in Efrat our Arab neighbors people who live in Bethlehem people live in the villages around here have a lot of work that they do in Efrat and many of them are not being allowed in at all perhaps none of them are being allowed in also on the building sites so do you have a lack of workers you have a lot of pressure how are you coping with all of these things leading up to a holiday which is going to come no matter what that sauce is gonna be whatever ten days so you're absolutely right and the challenges are not finishing because if you mentioned cleaning their houses just imagine a household that both parents are sick who is going to take the garbage or the trash out right so we have to actually get a list of volunteers that they do around nine o'clock in the morning all the households where both parents are sick and nobody can take the garbage out they actually go and collect the garbage from those people we have asked people not to throw out things which can be postponed usually we Sierra Festa people throwing out all their old furniture are the right hold the barbecue in your backyard nothing's gonna happen you'll rust a little more yeah you hmm dad you're stuck ah now back ok good good yeah no not to take out garbage eh that's not necessary to try and minimize the fact that they're taking out the Arab workers is definitely a challenge because you mentioned the city of Bethlehem the city of Bethlehem was the number one city a allocated to have the most another now you're stuck again yeah yeah I don't know what I got so basically the city of Bethlehem was allocated to be the number one city one of the most amount of people identified sick before in Israel we even understood that anything was happening and right now window yes that's why the military in the Minister of Defense they put the whole city of Bethlehem on the siege before there were any sanctions against Israeli public now that's challenging couldn't solve our supermarkets we have Arab workers that Bethlehem is their home time not necessarily that they live there but they can live in a village surrounding it and they go in and out and all these dilemmas raise question as to how you're going to allow them or not allow them to come into action to contact with a residence now it's very easy to say oh don't don't allow them to mix but then when you understand just like you said that they'll our old garbage system is based on Arab workers our building sites are based on our workers the challenge becomes much higher so for example Erina stuff we used to have big bins that were basically put out just for burning the Komets this year we understand we're not going to be able to do that number what people are not supposed to congregate around the specific area number two there won't be anyone who'll be able to take it out before between the time that we stop burning the comments and that the festival comes in so we got to risk it to actually write exact allaha that people will only have a small amount of comments that they will flush down the toilet and by that they will basically do burning the hummus so it's an ongoing challenge on different spheres whether it's practicalities of running the city morale issues as to how we treat their public and even her logic issues yes you have to get all circles involved in order to come out with something which makes sense for the individual as to how his life is supposed to carry on yeah well you mentioned halasana you mentioned the rabbi so there were many for the rabbi said that there shouldn't be Meena name you know you normally people pray in 10 quorum of 10 men but I went outside my hundred meters on Shabbat and there were at least two men a name going on in the street just in my neighborhood and people were staying very our parts they were on their porches you know there were like facing apartment buildings and people are on their porches people do feel a need there is kind of a complicated we're being told to not have these prayer services because people can very much spread the virus and the prayer services and the synagogues were one of the loci for this I think that's the word for the virus spreading on the other hand especially in the time of crisis people do feel a need to pray and to feel that there's a bigger picture going on here and to connect in that way and so I can see the tension so my husband has not been going out to these minium but he told me that he misses going to synagogue it's something that really anchored his day in the morning and it's hard for him and he's not you know and he's not the most social person look like of that there is something in having structure and this is this is a basic thing that's been taken away and even though the rabbi's are saying don't do it there are still some people doing it and there are also a lot of issues that are coming up if somebody passes away not even from the virus but just passes away from old age you know not surrounded sadly by children and grandchildren because we have to stay away what do you do with the body normally there's a whole procedure for taking care of the person but let's say they did pass away from the virus or people are together or other things going to the ritual bath so the women can the women go is this a place so you're involved not just in the administration of the town but in a lot of different side things that are happening here that are no less important I would add even more I think elderness that you've mentioned is definitely a all very good and valid examples but there's one even bigger challenge and that is human nature at the end of the day we're heard of creatures we might like to have our own property and closed it behind a door but at the end of the day there is a sense of community we like to be part of something you use it's that bigger picture by it's more than a picture bigger picture we like to be connected to others who we can share the same issues now you see it even in big cities like Manhattan that you would say oh everybody's running around and rushing to his job at the end of the day they're proud of being people who live in that dynamic City so a place like a front which was always being torn between being a city where there is no acceptance committee and there's no really sense of in the United community and on the other hand because of its history because of what truth risk him did when it was set up because of their incredible individuals that gathered up here there was always a very strong sense of community now in the time of the crisis people want assistance from their peers and even the social workers they're not allowed to go and knock on doors of senior citizens and see how you're doing today now that is a major challenge on the human nature as to how you take it from their normal habit of shaking hands and you say to people stop shaking hands keep your distance keep them apart from one another and I think all the list of things that you've mentioned are all examples of that major tension that this virus has hit us that we were never prepared every time we were preparing for something we said let's show you let's show unity let's show solidarity let's gather up for it's phenom now you're not allowed to do any of those things and that's why more and more people are looking for answers how do we overcome this time even though it might not be as scary as the media puts it out to be but the major challenges how do we change the human nature in coping in such a crisis and many of the people who have ongoing situations for example the child with special needs or somebody who's sick like immunotherapy may have people and my husband was telling me just some of the cases of his patients you have people who have diseases and there are immunosuppressed on a day-to-day basis because whatever it is they have and now they're being so now they're more susceptible to getting sick where people with kids with special needs we're now home all those programs are closed so it's one thing to have you know a typical four-year-old bouncing off the wall but what if you have a kid who really has behavioral issues who needs that who was now cooped up in the house and I know and I think I'm healthy and it's very very hard for me to be cooped up in the house I love going out on the blocking and so there are so many things behind here what do you what is what are your social workers are they able to at least call people the psychologist has that whole that whole system just been also put on hold completely not it just had to adopt to the new rules and regulations okay this is didn't resolve themselves cases then become any easier and you've listed issues of special needs and people who were sick and now they've got a less strong immune system but just imagine a family which unfortunately is going through a divorce process or there is joint custody now who is going to communicate between the two people who just had a big fight it ended up pretty cool very big and now somebody needs to look over who is transferring the kids from one house to another house now just imagine I can make things even complicated one of the split parents is also been identified as a positive carrier now he wants to see his kids but he's in quarantine now that means that the other spouse is going to have more days or more hours of seeing the kids now you can just imagine what the snowball that builds up into the social workers are in the middle of it even not having all that complexity just dealing with day to day issues with not being able to actually sit with the people show empathy so sympathy that is a major challenge that they're trying to build new skills as to how to cope at this time and how about helping people who've lost their jobs because I'm sure you have quite a few people who now I mean I lost my job as a tour guide but I know there's people who are the heads of households who no longer have work and here you are coming up to a holiday season as well is there some kind of system in place to at least help give a loan or help people out with flow distribution or something so I have to admit I think that's one of the issues that hasn't been addressed yet properly and we're talking about amounts of people which are completely understandable Israel was all the time and showing off was having a one-digit a figure of unemployment most of the time under five percent which were a one of major things that the attorney I was in praising about economical system we've now crossed a half a million people which are unemployed were climbing up to 20 percent of unemployed people that is a major part of the population now the the challenges that you can't really say also let their business owners deal with their workers because they want to shut down so their source of income is not carrying on so they don't have a supply of income funds that they can distribute salaries so a lot of the people have been put into unemployment slots and and I understand that that is one of the major concerns which are on the government's table at the moment to see how they actually manage it and challenge it aim on a local level we've always caught the generosity of some very wealthy individuals or helping out giving out charity but even they have to stay seeing this reality not knowing as to where it's going are also taking a step back because they're saying we can't guarantee that our sources will not ask for as long as we want so it's a vicious circle and and we'll have to see how long it carries out for and hopefully the government will come out with some financial scheme that everybody will be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel so a problem that Israel has that I would imagine virtually no other western country has is we are also very intertwined in a not great neighborhood on a regular day here in the Middle East and we mentioned that some of the villages around here in the sense of many of the workers we provide them a lot of the employment that the Palestinian Authority doesn't and many of the workers even in the supermarket's the locals the regional supermarkets and there's a tremendous integration however there's also a tremendous tension they still are under the Palestinian Authority these are still play is where we have to have security because terrorism doesn't end just because there is there is uh there is a health crisis and it could be that their tension is building up even more as they lose their jobs as the Palestinian Authority doesn't manage the crisis as they should so what's going on in terms of a Manor you still have to you still have our key tuck continuity you know we still have our our guys the volunteer people who who who protect a fraud on any day and also the army so how is this all integrating or this has kind of been put on the back burner for now or it can't be nothing is put on hold and that's why I said that I find myself working even harder when Adam virus program I didn't actually start having talks with and the commanders of the army in this region and at first I was scared as to because of what we heard about Devlin what safety precautions were taken when definite that they won't spread the virus so I was confident that they actually said that in the Palestinian Authority maybe not like with the Israeli government the measurements are held way more strictly if somebody is supposed to be in quarantine and he's not being in quarantine he gets heavy funny heavily punished he's been put behind bars there sanctions away stricter a bit what we saw happening in China but then when people started losing their jobs immediately it crossed my mind because they don't have a mentality like we have putting money aside saving it for a rainy day there and there after aneurysm their way of life is they eat out of their hands whatever they are and they go immediately and they spend it out now if that's a scenario and they're not getting paid for a week two weeks three weeks they will start walking around looking for food now if there isn't a solid border if if there isn't then safety and measurements are based on some sort of mannerism all of a sudden you have masses of people starting to look for food that can become as safety hazard so I was again assured that the Army is actually having plans to see how to protect the safety of it's residents but then I carried on the challenge and I said but how are you actually protecting these soldiers from not getting the virus be made but my son for example is in a tank unit so if let's say 20% of his unit get sick with the virus and all those who get sick with the virus tank drivers that means that the unit of tanks can't actually go to the border and protect the borders of Israel so the army did take very strict precautions basically didn't allow any of the soldiers to go out for at least 28 days took all the soldiers out of debate says they're eating out of emergency food kits which means that they're not coming across fresh fruit to try and isolate them as much as possible from contact with society how long can that last I don't know but these are definitely challenging times that we have to think of questions that we never thought before about so I it occurred to me I remembered that I think it was 2006 they Second Lebanon War and you yourself a commander in the tank corps if I'm not mistaken and you ate at my house for lunch on Shabbat you had gotten out for a few days essentially to attend funerals if I'm not mistaken of your soldiers and then it was on a Friday and so you stayed out for Shabbat to be with your family and you came to us for lunch and you were telling us some of the crazy stories that were happening there and one of them had to do with llamas that maybe you tell it because because it would just occur to me that sometimes people think out of the box but it doesn't always work so just to inject I I don't know if it's humorous but it's definitely not something my listeners would expect to hear the llama story basically again it was also again a challenging time because Lebanon is a very hilly place with very steep mountains and Hizballah was granting types of minds all over the place was basically met their convoys of a yep got stuck again yeah I'm here somebody doesn't want me to tell the story about my Nona's a hilly area with steep mountains this is Bella put out mines and all sorts of different bones underneath all the roads in the past which made it impossible for the convoys to go and give supply to everyone supposed to get the supply aim and what a one of the commanders fought he said okay let's overcome them and we'll put the supplies on lama's which have got their capability of carrying very heavy load and then we'll just bring the supplies to the units and it seemed like a very logical very sensible out-of-the-box idea and they did a drill and they loaded on the llamas all the supplies that were supposed to do and they started making sure that the llamas can go in a convoy and everything is controlled and it seemed like an amazing idea just nobody actually tested what happens when a llama here's a one for link next to it and sure enough the first convoy of llamas go on track one of them steps on a mine nevermind what happened to hare which we don't want to elaborate about but all the rest of the llama is just starting running in all different directions taking the supply to different places that we haven't found up until today now I'm not criticizing that was yes but what it is it when we face challenges that we don't know how to deal with we don't know what experiment will actually succeed people are now printing in three-dimension a prince a resuscitator is like their different ideas coming from different directions whatever will work will be the Cure will be the major a to assist us with this technology time and we need to find think of time with new ideas and hope that one of them will be the breaking gas solution okay well I have no doubt that Israel is going to be at the forefront helping the world whether it's with the vaccine or with coming up with easy to build respirators whatever it is we have a phenomenal population here and in that frats no less some of I think the the greatest people in Israel I think live in this little town and and I think we're gonna see great things from here and I'm gonna let you go because I know you've got a bear a lot to do today so mayor a dead Rubio their fraud thank you so much for giving me some of your time which means a little less sleeping time and I think you're probably doing very much of that these days and we just hope that all of us the entire world overcomes this as soon as possible that we learn some big lessons from it don't just go back to business as usual but some of the things that we see that we miss now to integrate more into our lives like as you were saying the social the social elements and that we don't take anything for granted as I know that you don't so thank you so much Shavua Tov I'm Samir and thank you for everything that you're doing with all the wishes that you as I said I think it's a great learning time break period to actual insight what we may be neglected what religious transcend or the day after [Music] thank you so much you