Opinion: Israel’s vaccine rollout a shining beacon

While it gives us no pleasure to see Israel’s greatest friend floundering in its efforts to inoculate its population, it does throw into relief once more how well Israel is doing.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

Israel’s vaccine rollout is No. 1 in the world, a fact well-publicized. The country has made a complicated logistical feat appear easy, something made apparent by the hiccups (to use the most polite term) other countries have experienced.

The latest hiccup is in the U.S. when news broke Sunday that the Biden administration managed to lose track of 20 million vaccine doses.

“It’s a mess,” said one advisor of Biden’s vaccination effort.

One insider with knowledge of the Biden vaccine effort said, “They are planning. They are competent. It’s just the weight of everything when you sit down in that chair. It’s heavy.” The excuse comes over as rather feeble as they clamored to be in that chair.

While it gives us no pleasure to see Israel’s greatest friend floundering in its efforts to inoculate its population, it does throw into relief once more how well Israel is doing.

For one thing, Israel knows where its vaccines are.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel expects about a million more vaccine doses to arrive within a week. Israel has administered vaccines to over 3 million Israelis, or 33.4% of its population.

Try in contrast to get a vaccine in New York State, which provides a phone number where no one picks up, whose governor, embroiled in a nursing home scandal because his administration forced Covid patients on them, said “Who cares?” this Friday when confronted with the fact that twice as many elderly died in nursing homes from Covid than previously reported.

Cuomo’s New York offers a good example of what not to do when fighting a pandemic. It differs sharply with what Israel has been doing, which is everything to get vaccines into people’s arms no matter if they’re in an age group currently being administered to or not.

Young Israelis showing up to clinics at the end of the day get the shot. The principal Israel operates by is don’t waste a single vaccine. And their shelf lives are limited. Pfizer’s lasts only five days after being removed from its minus 70° Celsius deep freeze.

In New York, Cuomo fined hospitals $1 million if they went off script, that’s to say, gave vaccines to people who weren’t designated to receive them. Hospitals begged for more flexibility but didn’t dare risk the outrageous fine.

At the same time, Cuomo threatened a $100,000 fine if the hospitals didn’t use up their vaccines in seven days. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Perhaps the most remarkable story about Israel is that a country known for its bureaucracy acted in an utterly un-bureaucratic way. Facing an emergency it applied common sense – a characteristic in as short supply as a New York vaccine, and we worry, vanishing from the U.S. like a Biden dose.

David Isaac is managing editor of World Israel News.