It’s true that Israel, which benefited from its
countrywide electronic medical-record system and its decision to buy lots of
vaccine doses relative to its population, has the U.S. beat. The United Arab Emirates is also
lapping much of the world, immunizing people of all ages using China’s vaccine. The United Kingdom, which authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech shot in December, before any other
Western nation, is performing especially
well relative to the rest of the globe. The U.K.’s apparent lead over the U.S. is at least in part due to its decision to start mass vaccinations by giving the first dose of the two-dose regimen to as many people as possible, a strategy called “
First Doses First.”
But despite lost doses and frustrating
vaccine websites, the U.S. is vaccinating its residents faster than any member of the European Union—which may be surprising, given that so many European health-care systems are touted as
being more efficient than America’s. As of this writing, the U.S. has vaccinated
15.9 people out of every 100, while Germany has vaccinated just five, France has reached four, and Croatia less than three. The U.S. government, finally, appears to have done something right.
Still, this story is more about the foibles of the European Union than the triumph of the United States. The EU worried that if it left each of its member countries to acquire vaccines for itself, smaller and poorer nations wouldn’t be able to buy enough. European leaders bet that, by negotiating for vaccines as a bloc, they could match America’s purchasing power.