Yesterday evening used the Arab 255 bus back-door Yeshiva - Damascus Gate, Light Rail to Ammunition Hill, Egged 54 to apartment. Eight-to-ten times number of passengers in all three vehicles vs. same trip late last week. Most wore masks as I did. Almost as many standing as sitting on Light Rail. No social-distancing really possible.
I heard that Isreal is way ahead in vaccinations.
And that the vaccines seem to be very effective at preventing severe infections and effective at reducing transmission. New reports state that vaccine deliveries here are ramping up and anyone who wants to get vaccinated should be able to do so no later than July.
Here in San Diego county, the daily status reports suggest that hospitalizations are dropping faster for the 70 and above age group than for the 69 and below.
Used light rail twice today. Downtown between Damascus Gate and City Hall, a typical rush-hour crowd, with no "social distancing" possible. Going only one stop, I turned-down the offer of a seat. Returning as far as suburban Givat HaMatvir, 'Hill of those remaining" against rush-hour, only half-a-seated-load, normal for the direcion and time of day.
New for me was riding a new Polish-built Solaris articulated low-floor bus. Possitively the best city transit diesel bus I've ever ridden. The first low-floor witih a decent suspension. Two double-width doors in the front section and two in the rear. Even LED interior , great seat arrangement with sufficient aisle width to get by standees, excellent even intelligible public address, bright exterior LED route and destination singage, the latter alternating between Arabic, Hebrew, and English, makes the MAN Hungarian buses that have dominated Jerusalem tranist for over ten years seem very obsolete.
In the Arab sector, a popular bus is the Izuki low-floor, not articulated and slightly smaller than normal size. Front and rear door single-width, the center door double-widh. Good lighting and seating, have yet to hear the PA actually used, suspension no better or worse than the MANs. Front door a steel frame around one full-height window.
A new stage of normality was apparent to me Wednesday evening.
During the previous month and before there were a few times when a bus driver would not stop for me. Both at the back-door of the Yeshiva and near my apartment. Reason? I'd forgotten to put on my mask.
As of the Sunday before, we did not need them.
Wednesday evening, I did not need to walk to the nearby bus-stop. A driver saw me in my BNSF beenie, and I walked directly across the sidewalk into a Japanese three-door low-floor, for the ride to Damascus Gate. Didn't even notice whether a 255 or 275. No-one on board wore masks.
No one I passed between the Damascus Gate bus station and the Light Rail Station wore masks.
When I boarded the front door of the LRT, scanned my plastic on the fare machine, a gentleman in the aisle-front-right seat stood to permit my sitting adjacent at the window. No one in the railcar wore masks.
Ditto at the Amunition Hill transfer station, where both a 34 and 52, either good to my apartment, showed-up together, and ditto on the 34 bus I used and in the space between the bus stop and the apartment door.
But the number of daily new cases, though far-far less than at the height of the illnesdss, showes a small daily increase, and the govdernment has restored the maskp-wearing reuirement on public transit.
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