Juno News - January 22, 2021


What can Canada learn from Israelā€™s vaccine rolloutļ¼Ÿ


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

204.60431

Word Count

1,185

Sentence Count

6

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 So Israel is leading the world in COVID vaccinations and they're one of the least damaged OECD
00:00:10.360 economies in the world behind only Norway and Ireland which means that they've done pretty
00:00:14.740 well all things considered. Now it's important to look at the Israeli example not only so we
00:00:19.800 can compare apples to apples when we're talking about the differences between Canada's successes
00:00:23.680 or failures and Israel's successes or failures but so we can understand what lessons there might be
00:00:28.440 that we can adopt here to make our vaccine rollout much much smoother and ensure that we get back to
00:00:32.960 normal as soon as possible. So a couple things to keep in mind first about the country of Israel
00:00:37.300 number one it is a very small country it's about the size of New Jersey so that in and of itself
00:00:42.640 would mean that it is much easier to ship the vaccine around compared to for example a flight
00:00:47.320 from you know Toronto to anywhere else Toronto to Quebec BC to Quebec wherever the vaccine is going
00:00:53.240 to be coming in you know you have to go maybe hundreds thousands of kilometers compared to
00:00:57.620 when it's maybe only hundreds at most and that's in the low hundreds. Additionally Israel is very
00:01:02.520 densely populated in that the population is very concentrated in a number of areas that would be
00:01:07.740 probably around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem you know there's some cities in the north but other than that
00:01:11.880 it's it's pretty sparsely populated mostly in the middle of the country which again makes it much
00:01:15.660 easier to deliver that vaccine. Additionally because Israel has faced so many military threats in the
00:01:21.500 recent history of the modern state since its founding in 1948 practically everyone is a reservist
00:01:27.300 and so the government is going to have contact information for almost all these people they're
00:01:31.020 going to have a way to reach out to these people these people might be trained in first aid or how
00:01:35.100 to administer vaccines and so a lot of people have volunteered to help with the rollout and that
00:01:39.080 has definitely assisted them in terms of manpower and its ability to administer the vaccine to as many
00:01:44.180 people as possible. Additionally Israel is a biotech powerhouse now a lot of people refer to Israel as
00:01:50.780 the startup nation and most people tend to think of sort of the you know traditional technology
00:01:55.340 technology kind of companies you know maybe something to do with the internet or some high-tech
00:01:59.220 military equipment but it is also a biotech powerhouse if you compare for example Canada to Israel
00:02:04.840 Israel has according to one study that I found about 550 biotech firms where Canada for a much larger
00:02:10.800 country much larger population has about 800 there is a company for example called Teva which you may
00:02:15.760 have heard of it is very popular in Canada a lot of our generic drugs are made through Teva and that
00:02:21.140 is actually an Israeli company the name means nature which interesting side note actually the word nature
00:02:25.520 does not appear in the Hebrew Bible even once but you know for example companies like that they are
00:02:30.900 operating in Israel and around the world and so Israel has a very very large biotech sector which has
00:02:36.820 definitely given it a lot of pull when talking to companies like Pfizer which again on the next
00:02:41.440 point the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has been on the phone with the CEO of Pfizer on a
00:02:47.220 very regular basis compared to Justin Trudeau which has not I think until today been on the phone and
00:02:52.980 this filming is on Thursday so that would be yesterday but the big difference is that Israel has been
00:02:58.920 very pushy about getting vaccine not relenting the Prime Minister is very insistent that the country will have
00:03:05.760 a normal Passover that's going to be around March the fact that there is also maybe an election going
00:03:10.660 to be happening around March may have something to do with it but they are very very insistent on
00:03:15.000 getting the vaccine and making sure that everyone is going to get one by March so the country can be
00:03:19.140 totally vaccinated totally safe by then so the question then is what can Canada learn Israel has
00:03:24.960 vaccinated over 3 million people already there's a lot of data that we can mine what can Canada learn
00:03:29.900 well the first thing we can learn is how and when to administer the shots as we know there are two
00:03:34.800 different shots so the first and then the second booster it turns out that people are far less
00:03:39.860 immune after the first one than many people thought and so we are learning and you see there are some
00:03:44.580 articles coming out of Quebec that we're learning that we cannot delay between the first and the second
00:03:48.480 that is very important to get people those second booster shots second we should learn to be
00:03:52.840 much more insistent about our vaccine delivery we've got to be on the phone with the CEOs of various
00:03:57.820 different companies pushing that we should get our deliveries get them on time maybe even get them early
00:04:01.960 something that is very important to ensure that we do have that adequate supply second the logistical
00:04:07.700 issue now I understand obviously Canada is a very different country than Israel just in terms of
00:04:11.660 size in terms of logistics in terms of structure but we have to put that infrastructure in place as
00:04:16.700 the Israelis have done early on that may require some of that infrastructure to sort of be idle even
00:04:21.240 though it is there in place even though they don't have vaccines but the fact that we have an
00:04:25.780 infrastructure in place will mean that when the vaccines arrive we'll be able to administer them much
00:04:30.700 easier and much faster and then lastly we need our leaders and we need people in this country to be
00:04:36.000 much more insistent that getting back to normal is a high priority if not the highest priority again
00:04:41.740 the prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has made that the highest priority saying that Israel
00:04:46.500 will have a normal Passover march there's going to be an election so that's obviously part of his
00:04:50.340 calculus but they are very insistent insistent on showing that commitment to return to normal life so I
00:04:56.440 really hope that some of our political leaders will look at the Israeli example take whatever good they can
00:05:00.700 and maybe ignore some of the bad or ignore some of the pitfalls that they have fallen into
00:05:04.620 but definitely something we can learn I really hope that we will get our vaccines on time and get
00:05:09.680 everyone vaccinated before you know this the other side effects that are dragging on take their toll
00:05:15.140 and hopefully we can just get back to normal as soon as possible so
00:05:19.000 for TrueNorth I am Sam Ashkenazi thank you so so much for watching this video
00:05:22.480 I'll see you on next slide
00:05:30.400 please
00:05:31.660 find out
00:05:32.500 whether it's a problem
00:05:33.400 you
00:05:33.680 or
00:05:34.120 you
00:05:34.660 either