In late 2020, the airways became saturated with triumphant reporting of Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” covid-19 vaccines. Millions rolled up their sleeves with the belief that reaching herd immunity would end the pandemic.

But by June 2021, the pandemic endgame story had gone off script. Highly vaccinated countries like Israel were experiencing a new wave of covid infections, vaccination rates were starting to slow, and public scepticism was snowballing.

Authorities tried to allay fears by saying that new infections were “rare breakthroughs,” but the data became too difficult to ignore.

By early July, the Israeli Ministry of Health reported that vaccine effectiveness against infection and symptomatic disease had fallen to 64 percent. Three weeks later, revised estimates put Pfizer’s vaccine at just 39 percent effective.