Israel, the UK, and the U.S. lead the way on vaccinations

The identity of the three major nations doing the best job of vaccinating their people against the Wuhan coronavirus will probably come as no surprise to readers who have been following the news on the subject. The three are Israel, the UK, and the U.S.

Israel tops them all. It has administered an astonishing 98.5 doses per 100 people. The UK is a distant second with 35.1 doses per 100. Next comes the U.S. at 27.2 doses.

Israel reportedly paid premium prices for vaccine, enabling it to get off to an incredibly quick start. Now, it is even vaccinating Palestinians who work in Israel — around 100,000 of them per day. Still, Israel’s many enemies criticize it for not taking care of other Palestinians — as if the Israelis have a moral obligation to vaccinate an unrelentingly hostile population, many of whose members favor destruction of the Jewish state.

The UK also got off to a flying start. Brits should be grateful for Brexit. The cumbersome EU bureaucracy moved slowly on the vaccination front, and member nations are paying the price. For example, France has administered only 8.5 doses per 100 people. Spain and Italy have done only slightly better (9.6 and 9.0, respectively).

The U.S. also started quickly. While the EU dithered, President Trump pushed the FDA to approve the two available vaccines quickly.

Two less prominent nations also deserve mention. They are the UAE (65.1 doses per 100 people) and Serbia (23.7 doses).

Serbia’s success seemingly is attributable to the realization that, not being an EU member, it could not rely on Brussels. The Serbs aggressively sought and obtained vaccine from wherever it was available — the U.S., China, Russia, and the EU.

The UAE was able to put lots of shots in arms because it rapidly approved China’s version of the vaccine. The efficacy of that vaccine is subject to doubt, however.

According to Worldometer, the number of new cases in the UAE has actually increased since vaccinations commenced. In mid-December, the UAE was reporting about 1,200 new cases per day. Throughout January, the number was steady at nearly three times that number. Now, it’s about double what it was in mid-December.

Is the vaccine used in the UAE at least preventing deaths? The numbers don’t show that it is. Deaths from the virus spiked in the UAE during February.

Worldometer paints a far happier picture of the other four vaccination leaders — Israel, the UK, the U.S., and Serbia. New cases in Israel are about one-third of what they were a month and a half ago. So too with deaths.

In the UK the results are even more dramatic. At the beginning of the year, it was reporting more than 50,000 new cases per day. Now, the number is around 6,000. The daily death count is down from around 1,500 to around 300. But the UK was doing vastly worse than Israel pre-vaccine, so there was much more room for improvement.

In the U.S., new reported cases have plummeted, as well — from around 250,000 per day to around 60,000. So far, improvement in the daily death count has been less dramatic. Still, in the past two months, the decline in deaths per day attributed to the virus exceeds 50 percent.

By contrast, vaccine laggards such as France and Italy aren’t seeing a decrease in new cases per day or a significant decrease in deaths.

What about Serbia? With its odd array of vaccines, it is getting odd outcomes.

New reported cases dropped from around 7,500 per day in early December to around 2,000 in January. But then, the number rose. It’s now between 3,500 and 4,000.

The daily death count decreased from around 50 per day in late December to around 20 per day in late January. Since then, it has held steady at about that number.

Vaccines produced in Russia and China are, I assume, better than nothing. However, the numbers presented in this post tend to confirm my view that vaccines produced in the USA are vastly preferable.

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