According to this report, Israel has given coronavirus doses to more than 10 percent of its population of 9.2 million since it began administering Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine on December 19. On a per capita basis it has administered doses to almost four times as many people as Bahrain, which comes in second.
The United Kingdom, which got a head start, comes in third. Israel has given doses to approximately eight times as many people per capita as the UK. (The U.S. comes in fourth.)
These numbers confirm the anecdotal evidence we received from my wife’s cousins in Israel. Two of them, one in her early 60s and the other in her late 50s, were vaccinated last week. The younger of the two received a shot because the vaccination center had leftovers at the end of the day that it couldn’t store.
Why is Israel doing so well? According to a news report we heard last night on a French television, the Israeli government was extremely aggressive in purchasing the vaccine. Reportedly, the government was willing to pay a premium price to obtain it.
In addition, the pharmaceutical companies reportedly were eager to supply Israel because its reputation for efficiency made it a good place to show off the vaccine. However, Israel has been administering doses so efficiently that it may be running out of the vaccine. There might be a brief pause in the process.
According to the same French news report, the military has supplied personnel in support of the effort to expedite the administration of shots. Apparently, Israel is mobilized to vaccinate in ways that other nations are not.
It helps that Israel is highly centralized. It doesn’t have to rely on states, like the U.S., or cantons, like Switzerland. The report we heard on French television drew a sharp contrast between Israel’s early success and the faltering efforts (thus far) of the Swiss.
The mainstream media wants to attribute Israel’s success to its nationalized health care system. But most developed countries have nationalized health care systems. So this is not the explanation.
The mainstream media also moans that Palestinians who live in the West Bank or in Gaza aren’t getting the vaccine from Israel. However, there is no reason why Israel should help Palestinians receive the vaccine until Israel has vaccinated its entire population. At that point, it might be in Israel’s interest to help stop the pandemic in the adjacent West Bank.
In any case, the Palestinian Authority apparently hasn’t requested that Israel provide access to the vaccine.
Israel is, of course, administering the vaccine to Israeli-Arabs. However, they are more hesitant than Jews to receive the shot. Last week, Prime Minister Netanyahu traveled to an Arab town to encourage Israeli-Arabs to turn out for the vaccine. He stated:
We brought millions of vaccines here, more than any other country in the world relative to its population. We brought them to everyone: Jews and Arabs, religious and secular.
“Come and be vaccinated,” he added in Arabic.
There were fears in some quarters that Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews might resist being vaccinated. However, according to the New York Times, these fears have “dissipated.” I wonder whether there was ever much of a foundation for them.
It’s a credit to Israel, and to Netanyahu, that Israel is leading the race when it comes to vaccinating its population against the coronavirus. No one should be surprised that Israel is doing so well.
