by MakeUsWell
Nota Bene
MakeUsWell knows the American market, cold. We also know the UK and Indian markets fairly well. Although some of us have worked and dabbled in the Israeli market, we lack in-depth knowledge and understanding of Israel and her market.
So, we turned to people and publications that have accumulated knowledge and are top-notch in Israel.
Our ally Israel, like us, is suffering from political turmoil and mistrust towards the government. Ergo, we took special care to ensure that our sources—like MakeUsWell—are non-partisan, and driven by science and data.
What ?
Israel has ~9.3 M people and a GDP between 390-398 billion. They began an aggressive, best-in-the-world, COVID vaccination drive on December 19, 2020.
Google's specialized question-answering search writes "As of the beginning of February 15, 6.28M doses, 68.39 per 100 people" have been administered. Google acknowledges their numbers may differ from other sources.
3.83 million people overall have been vaccinated. Nearly 2.5 million people received the second dose of the vaccination, according to Haaretz's Feb 10-13 edition. Haaretz was founded in 1918, and is the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel.
Pfizer Facts
Before the 2/22 market open, Pfizer had a ~$192 B market cap. The company is headquartered ~ .3 miles from Grand Central.
The Company made a deal with the Israeli government for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19. There were concerns about the Israeli government's data-sharing arrangement with Pfizer. After bad publicity, a redacted version of the contract was released.
The contract dated January 6, 2021 references a previous Manufacturing and Supply agreement—date redacted and this covenant unavailable.
From section 1.5—“Pfizer Data” means aggregated information about the Product in other jurisdictions in the world, which may include scientific, safety and efficacy information collected by PFIZER as may be useful to serve the Project's objectives which will be provided by PFIZER to the MoH subject to applicable legal requirements and based on PFIZER’s reasonable determination.
The redlined issues:
- "Other Jurisdiction" is vague and could include somewhere without much data protection, privacy, or HIPPA like standards --- say China.
- PFIZER’s reasonable determination. Reasonable is vague and Pfizer is left to make decisions with a clear conflict of interest.
Section 6, Indemnification, Limitations of Damages, And Liability, the entire section is redacted. This gives Israeli citizens no visibility to the potential risks and how they are handled.
The Jurisdiction of the contract is in NY. This will further erode trust.
For FY2021, America provided ~$3.8 billion in aid to Israel. But we didn't protect our ally from a corporation whose vaccine was funded by taxpayer money.
This action and inaction further erodes trust in our government. Not only from Israeli citizens but also Americans.
So How is it going?
Dvir Aran is Assistant Professor @ Technion, Israel. He did postdoctoral research at University of California, San Francisco. And has a good reputation in Silicon Valley. Most importantly, his work is non-partisan.
On February 2, on Twitter, Dvir estimated the vaccine effectiveness at 50-90%. That day, he replied to our question and wrote:
My hunch is that it is at least in the mid range, and even better for severe disease. Definitely good news. Again, this is after some frustration a couple of weeks ago that we don’t see any effect.
Ten days later, he wrote:
My third update of the vaccine efficacy assessment. Not as optimistic as the previous posts… Based on Feb 9 data, protection against hospitalization with 2nd dose = 71-82%, protection against serious disease, 69-77%.
Yuval Harpaz has a PhD in Psychology (brain research) from Tel Aviv University. He is also a non-partisan Israeli with in-depth knowledge and credibility.
We asked Yuval over a private, Twitter message,
Is the mood in Israel kinda optimistic, given the early vaccine results you shared?
He responded,
Hi
We are tense. New cases are on the rise, mostly young, so while we are relieved to know the older generation is mostly protected, we can still lose many lives, perhaps younger than before
Both Dvir and Yuval's response can be characterized as pragmatic, cautious optimism. They're smart enough to recognize the incremental progress. But The vaccines aren't a magical elixir that will suddenly turn COVID off and eradicate the disease.
Conclusion
- The US Government (across both parties) has failed the trust test, based on the opaqueness and the self-serving behavior permitted to Pfizer. In this case our government let down an ally's citizens and our own citizens.
- Much of the mainstream media narrative—when they aren't manufacturing outright lies, trying to foment the cancel mob, doxing sources, censoring free thought/speech, or chasing clicks—is simplistic, inaccurate soundbites, like, "Israeli vaccine program is a huge success."
- The reality is more nuanced. A lot of the Israeli cohorts they're comparing are mismatched groups or have other issues—according to objective Israeli scientists and data analyses. A number of these Israeli scientists haven’t received the raw data from the government.
- Nonetheless, the vaccines have brought about measurable—albeit incremental—improvements.