As we post this podcast, the US has vaccinated about 2 percent of its population, Canada is at 0.5 percent, France is at 0.001 percent, and Israel? 20 percent. By the end of this week, Israel will have vaccinated two-thirds of its population over 60 years old and most of the country’s medical staff, at which point they will all be called back for their second vaccination.

According to international studies, Israel’s healthcare system has been ranked among the most efficient in the world. And due to big data and AI, the Israeli health system is certainly one of the most digitally advanced.

To call 2021 a historic year is an understatement. But what’s less obvious is how to put the pandemic of 2020 in a historical context. What lessons can be learned about our response to past public health crises? Can these lessons be applied to the one we’re living through now, and what may lie ahead, post-Corona?

As we transition from this most unusual year, Dan checks in with Niall Ferguson. Niall is a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and he’s the managing director of Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm. Niall is also the author of 15 books including The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook.