| HHis Ideas 39 ~ Each Country, Each Policy |
July 8, 2021
|
| It was a challenging and well-made program on TV, in which a newscaster asked this country's citizens living now in various countries about each country's situation of vaccination. In advance, they gave a questionnaire to a 100 people in 50 countries, then they interviewed 20 people through Zoom. They also sent their staff to some of the countries to get more information. From their report, the vaccination situation varied from country to country. About 40% of the 100 people had vaccinations. In some countries they had a hard time to apply for the vaccination because the reservation process was too competitive. Some countries were not so difficult to get vaccinations. A person living in a small country that was a tropical island reported that its citizens' vaccination rate was 100%. Israel was the earliest country to receive vaccinations. A rather large number of citizens had been vaccinated. In the downtown area, people weren't wearing masks. In an interview, they said that they were happy that they could go anywhere and they were proud of their nation's vaccination policy. The health minister explained that when the pandemic started, the nation soon evaluated which vaccine would be the best, and then offered a deal to the maker that if they were given vaccinations, they would submit all of the data of the people who had taken  vaccinations to the maker. It was a win-win situation for the maker, because the more data that the maker got, the more effectively they could use it for the rest of their experiments. He knew that Israel was one of the highest "crisis-conscious" countries in the world because of their history. Some countries used vaccinations because of tourism. In Hawaii and Phuket, in Thailand, they vaccinated their workers earlier than other cities, and started to accept tourists who had a vaccination certificate. In Alaska, they made a 'vaccination package tour'. People who hadn't gotten a vaccination yet could come and get a shot. From various countries, especially countries where vaccinations were slow, tourists came and got a vaccination and enjoyed sightseeing, like seeing the glaciers. They introduced England's case. If his memory was correct, England was the second earliest vaccinated country. He had thought that England had some major pharmaceutical companies, so, they just had asked them to give them the vaccines. But, he was wrong. The prime minister, who had had a sense of crisis because there were so many victims of the virus, asked a venture capitalist who had connections with the pharmaceutical world to help its citizens with acquiring vaccinations. That was in May of last year. But, that didn't mean that the venture capitalist just negotiated with the various pharmaceutical companies. Her team researched which vaccines were most promising. Then they chose 7 candidate companies from 240 companies, and started to give them national subsidies. It accelerated the companies developing speed. After a certain period, her team narrowed them into a smaller number, and concentrated more subsidies on those select companies. They had had a contract with the companies to prioritize their country when the vaccine was successfully completed. He was amazed by this country's strategy and speedy actions. The program also introduced that England made a temporary law to allow anybody to give vaccination shots after receiving training and certification. On TV, an engineer was giving a vaccination. His Idea #39 : Each Country, Each Policy At the end of the program, the newscaster asked an interviewee from England about what was different between that country and our country. The A middle-aged man gave his comment through Zoom, saying, "England failed in the first stage in fighting against the coronavirus, but they recovered it with vaccinations. I felt this is this country's potential. This country has the guts to take risks -- no risk, no return. Maybe this is from this county's pride as a leading country. On the other hand, our country doesn't like to take risks, but would rather get its fruits as a late comer." Maybe that statement was correct, unfortunately, he thought. |
| |
No.441
*evaluated :評価する
*submit :提出する
*conscious :意識の高い
*glacier :氷河
*pharmaceutical :製薬の
*acquire :得る
*promising :有望な
*temporary :臨時の