an RNA-based vaccine which is now obvious a year ago you know if you'd spoken to any

expert they would have said 2030 at best 2035 at best and here we are on the podcast talking about this as a very kind of

obvious thing. It is anything but obvious. If this disease struck 10 years ago, not

a hundred years ago, not 100 years ago.

We wouldn't have been talking about 42 days.

Welcome to post-Corona, where we try to understand COVID-19's lasting impact on the economy, culture, and geopolitics.

I'm Dan Seinor. Is our post-corona future playing out right now in Israel? So far more than 70% of

Israelis age 16 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine and many of them

two jabs including my nieces my sisters and my mother in Jerusalem. How has

Israel done this? Well Israel Israel's Prime Minister negotiated with Pfizer to obtain

millions of vaccine doses early. Israel paid a premium for this upfront supply, but also agreed

to provide the company with indispensable clinical data,

made possible by Israel's robust digital health infrastructure.

Now the Prime Minister has set a goal of getting Israel's economy completely reopened by the spring.

What have we learned so far from Israel's experience?

Hospitalization rates and death rates of seriously ill patients are already declining.

According to a new study from Klait, one of Israel's health funds,

fully vaccinated people are 90% less likely to develop severe cases of the disease and

virus transmission is coming down too. So now Israel is dealing with a range of new economic and societal issues as it enters the post-corona phase.

To explain what may be heading our way, we have Yonatana Diri returning to our podcast.

Yonatana is the founder and CEO of Tel Aviv digital health startup, Healthy I.

He was also a top technology and diplomatic advisor to then president Shimon Perez. Has Israel become the world's post-corona laboratory?

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