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Re:Israel may have achieved herd immunity against Covid-19 by Cthulhu_ on Thursday April 08, 2021 @09:12AM (#26738262)
The priority everywhere at the moment is still to reduce pressure on hospitals, which (at least in my country, which is slower with the vaccination schedule, probably because countries like the UK and Israel pay the vaccine companies more) is still on the rise despite the number of cases stabilizing and in the past week or so reducing. And of course the number of deaths, which has been sharply declining since the start of the vaccination program, since the most vulnerable people got the jab first.

So yeah. The end goal is to eradicate the disease and to vaccinate everybody, but because of production and logistical problems that's not possible, so they focus on the in between goals of lowering death rate and hospitalizations, and that's been very effective so far.

Re:Israel may have achieved herd immunity against Covid-19 by simonh on Thursday April 08, 2021 @10:19AM (#26738985)
I think it was about how quickly and decisively they moved to secure supplies, how competently they negotiated the contracts and how effective they were at organising vaccination programmes. I think ultimately it was decisiveness that made the biggest difference, while other countries dithered about which vaccines to support.

Now arguably this exposed e.g. the UK to using a vaccine with unfortunate rare side effects (I was vaccinated with AZ myself), but on the other hand this has shielded us from a third wave of infections and probably saved tens of thousands of lives.