In Discourse Magazine, Charles Lipson explains why Israel is doing so well in vaccinating its population.
The country could afford the mass purchases thanks to decades of economic growth, grounded in high-technology, medical research, water conservation, sophisticated weapons development, cybersecurity and more. The growth was spurred by market-oriented public policies, adopted after years of sluggish European-style socialism under Labor governments.
Far less known, Israel offered Pfizer something valuable besides a premium price. It could provide the company with reliable, comprehensive data on how well the medicine works in a very large population. This data goes far beyond the 50,000 people Pfizer worked with in Phase 3 trials. It involves millions. Equally important, each one’s response to the vaccine can be paired (anonymously) with that person’s health record and demographic details. That’s possible because Israeli health authorities have maintained and digitized more than 30 years of medical history on the entire population. That history is available to doctors, nurses and emergency medical technicians as they treat patients. Now, with appropriate protections for privacy, it can be used for public health research.
Encouraging as this data is, the country has suffered badly from the pandemic. Israel’s lockdown has been the longest in the world, and not everyone has complied willingly. Time after time, ultra-religious Jews have gathered in massive numbers for funerals. Those Jews and some Israeli-Arabs are wary about taking the shots. International travel, vital for tourism and business, has been effectively closed. And despite a successful vaccination program, “herd immunity” is months away.
Still, Israel’s rollout of the new vaccines has set the pace for the world. The hope now is it generates data and distribution strategies that will help other nations achieve better outcomes.
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