A VACCINATION TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES: CANADA AND ISRAEL

 The longer Canadians must wait to get vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus, the more they are at risk of getting infected, hospitalized, needing intensive care, suffering lasting ailments or die and the greater are the economic and emotional costs from lockdowns and other restrictions on normal life.    

Canadians are facing long delays in getting vaccinated. On May 10, 2021, only 2.7 percent of the population was fully immunized and 34.1 percent had received one shot.

A popular comparison of countries’ efforts to vaccinate their populations uses the percent of the population that can be immunized with the number of vaccination doses acquired. Canada’s 10.1 million vaccines were sufficient for 21.5 percent of the population and place it in 30^th place in the world ranking, a position that has persisted for many weeks since all countries on the list continue to receive more vaccines.

On this list ahead of Canada are the United States and the United Kingdom with vaccines sufficient to immunize 40.9 and 39.9 percent of their populations, respectively. Remarkable is Israel’s 59 percent.

What explains the different record of these countries? In the case of the U.S. and U.K. it can be found primarily in their ability to get domestic producers of vaccines to ramp up production quickly and to administer them promptly to their populations.

This explanation does not work for Canada and Israel, which do not have major domestic producers of vaccines. Nor does the difference in their capacity needed to buy and administer vaccines offer a good explanation. Canada with a 2017 per capita income of $46,510 should have done better than Israel with a per capita income of $38,868.

The most likely explanation is found in Israel’s superior strategy to negotiate the purchase and delivery time of vaccines produced in other countries. This strategy resulted in the import of its first vaccines in December 2020 and thereafter in numbers large enough to create the country’s outstanding record. Canada, on the other hand, received its first batch of vaccines three months later in March 2021, initially in relatively small but later growing numbers.

The responsibility for the purchase of vaccines in both countries is that of their prime ministers who appoint the teams for the design of an acquisition strategy and approve its execution.  So, if we want to know why the rate of vaccination is so much better in Israel than Canada, we must look at the qualifications for the job provided by their respective educational background and work experiences.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earned BA degrees in English from McGill University and in Education from the University of British Columbia. He started but did not complete studies in Engineering and Environment Geography.

His work experience consists of teaching French and mathematics in high school and snowboarding at Whistler. He spent some time working for media and charities before his election to parliament in 2008. In 2013 he became leader of the Liberal Party and led it to victory in the 2015 election.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, earned a B.Sc. degree in Architecture and an M.Sc. in Business Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also studied political science at MIT and Harvard University.

His work experience includes time spent on active duty in the military and employment in the private sector and government. Israel’s uncommon electoral system caused him to serve as prime minister several different times after his first election to that post in 1996.

It is obvious that the educational and work background of Netanyahu is much better suited than that of Trudeau for heading efforts to quickly obtain a large supply of vaccines from suppliers in the private sector. However, detailed information about the different contracts negotiated by the two leaders is not available and may never be known, given the confidential nature of such contracts.

Canada provided some limited information about the contracts it has signed and why vaccines arrived as late and in small numbers. This information was used mainly to blame suppliers and unforeseen developments for the problem.

On the other hand, some interesting details of the contract negotiated by Netanyahu are available and reveal good business acumen. It offered to pay premium prices for the delivery of the first vaccines approved by health authorities and coming off the production lines. It also offered material assistance in testing the safety and effectiveness of vaccines in the development stage.

It is highly likely that the benefits of Israel’s policies in terms of health and economic outcomes are large and more than pay for the higher prices paid and for the cost testing assistance.

It will be interesting to see what educational and work experience is of the Prime Minister Canadians will choose in the next election.

CANADA SHOULD HAVE VACCINATION PASSPORTS

 

Vaccination Passports certify that holders are immune from the Covid-19 virus through vaccination, or the presence of anti-bodies caused by earlier infection. These passports are widely expected to ease and speed the transition from the current pandemic to normal personal and economic lives but have encountered some public and political opposition.

There is no doubt that presently the number of Canadians eligible to receive the passport is large. On April 14, 2021, 9.1 million Canadians had been immunized and 988 thousand had recovered from the illness. Their numbers are growing rapidly with new vaccinations and recoveries.

The problem with current discussions about the merit of the passports is that there is no single, detailed model of how a passport system would operate. As a result, much controversy and opposition is based on features that may or may not be adopted but which could be avoided by considering this simple model.

Passport holders have access to the myriad public and commercial facilities that make up modern life without having to obey Covid control protocols imposed by health-authorities. Importantly, they can travel abroad freely to countries that accept the passports as evidence of their immunity. The personal, economic, and social benefits brought by this feature are obvious.

The most fundamental criticism of the system arises from the concern that businesses will decide to serve only passport holders and thus cause other Canadians to suffer systemic discrimination akin to that suffered by other minorities whose conditions presently are such a great political issue.

Most Canadians who suffer would be waiting to be vaccinated. A small number could not be vaccinated for medical or religious reasons. An unknown number would refuse to be vaccinated because they distrust the healthcare system or government policies generally.

How realistic is the concern that businesses will serve only passport holders?

For one, it is illegal for Canadian businesses to refuse service to customers.

More important is that the profit motive will lead businesses to deal with all comers. Non-passport holders will bring sales and businesses will want to retain their good that will bring them back when the pandemic is over. Customers with and without passports can be served in two different sections of restaurants, theatres and recreation facilities with health protocols applied in only one of them.

Not all businesses can operate with two sections serving the two different groups of customers. For example, cruise ship lines that already have announced that they will serve only passengers with proof of immunity, cannot effectively operate separate sections.

However, if existing laws and the profit motive do not work as expected, Fairness Warriors can demand the adoption of regulation preventing it, which is likely to fall on sympathetic ears in Canadian governments.

Opposition to Vaccination Passports also comes from Freedom Warriors, who believe that they violate basic human rights to privacy and unnecessarily strengthen the power of the state. Acting on this view, the governors of  Florida and Texas already have signed legislation prohibiting the public and private issue of any such passports.

This policy is unlikely to gain significant support from Canadians who have much greater faith in government than most Americans. Moreover, the passports are just like other government-issued identification documents such as drivers’ licenses and travel passports as well as the documents showing vaccination against yellow fever and other communicable diseases that were used widely in the past. They involve an invasion of privacy but are used because they bring public benefits greater than costs.

Some opposition to the introduction of the passport system arises from fears that it leads to unauthorized access to medical information and the development of a black market in counterfeit passports, which apparently already operates on the dark web.

These problems can be avoided by attaching modules to existing government systems that electronically store private tax, social security, and health care information and protect it with pervasive safety protocols. These modules would store information about the vaccination status of individuals, including their pictures, which can be accessed by passport holders using either mobile phones or paper documents showing a QR code readable by ubiquitous electronic scanners.

The government of Israel already successfully operates a Vaccination Passport system, the U.K. is eying the introduction of one by June 28 and several countries have expressed their intention to recognize it. The government of Canada needs to do the same promptly and avoid the fiasco that marked its vaccination efforts.

Herbert Grubel

Emeritus Professor of Economics, Simon Fraser University