Checking the score cards on vaccinations the other day, I found I am in the top two per cent of Ontario residents. It is embarrassing. Ontario only has about four million more people than the State of Israel. Yet Israel can get the first shot of vaccine into the arms of 90 per cent of their population before Ontario reaches two per cent. That does seem embarrassing.
There are probably more than a few reasons for this difference. For example, Ontario has about 50 times the land area. Any farmer can tell you: you find eggs faster in a smaller chicken coop.
There was also the deal with Pfizer-BioNTech whereby Israel was used by that company for a mass test of its vaccine. That is why Israel had a large, early supply. The results of the test have been positive. And you could hardly expect Canada, with five times the population, to get a deal like that.
It was the same with the United Arab Emirates which is at about 60 per cent of the population having a shot of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine. A small population and a large supply of vaccine will do it every time.
And if you think a country as advanced as Canada should have its own vaccine, we might yet. We have a start-up still working on it. We might have had something earlier but Brian Mulroney, as prime minister back in the 1980s, sold off our Connaught Laboratories. Conservatives do not seem to believe in preparing for future pandemics.
You can hardly blame Justin Trudeau for the delays in Canada getting vaccinated. He is doing a good job of getting us a variety of vaccines. And the federal government is paying for it. The troublemakers are the provinces that will always blame Ottawa when they do not do their jobs properly. The worst are Alberta and Ontario.
Mind you, I am still trying to figure out what use there is in having retired generals running the distribution system for vaccines, using people who will not salute when given an order.
And now I hear that I might not get my second shot of the Pfizer vaccine much before May. So much for being an early adopter.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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