If there is one thing that makes me laugh it is that I am sometimes called a “veteran journalist”. There are those who wildly exaggerate and call me a “senior.” This is not artificial modesty God forbid (nor natural modesty) but simply an inability to acknowledge reality: in my eyes I as a young player who came up from youth and has not yet decided where he will take his career. Still, there is no denying that almost without feeling I will soon mark 29 years of writing practice. The great love of my life.
This introduction does not come except to say that since I typed my first article in the Einstein word processor (remember?) Quite a bit of ink has flowed in the printing presses, and the writing life has summoned me great encounters with iconic characters. The names of chefs and winemakers, from the protagonists of the local culinary scene, I will not agree. Not because they are not important, God forbid, but because there are so many of them, that I’m afraid I’ll forget someone. So I will mention just one encounter with who was, somewhere 20 years ago, one of the world’s greatest chefs, Joel Robuchon, may Allah have mercy, and of course the encounter that most moved me throughout my career, with Sir Alex Ferguson and the Manchester United squad (I will never forget the moment the elevator at the hotel stopped and Rio Ferdinand Wayne Rooney entered).
Over the years my threshold of excitement for encounters of the personal kind has greatly increased. I hope the dear reader will not consider me a condescending and arrogant person, if I say that I recently found myself answering in the same tone to a government minister who calls to see if I would be willing to rephrase some publication about him, or the young messenger company caller to find out the right entrance to the building. It’s not them, it’s me who realized: in the end they’re all people.
And last week, I was a little excited when Dr. Albert Burla, the chairman and CEO of the Pfizer pharmaceutical company, visited Israel. Burla came to Israel to receive the Genesis Foundation Award ($ 1 million, which he donated to preserve Jewish memory). Greece who perished in the Holocaust), but the curiosity he aroused here was more reminiscent of a tour of a rock star than of a serious and respected drug industry man. He was in Israel sometime 45 years ago, when he was a teenager.
Before I published the interview with him, it was clear to me that I would also draw a lot of fire, but before that I will make it clear: just as there are fans, say, of the Ferrari Formula 1 team, so when it comes to drugs, I am “Tim Pfizer”: the Corona vaccine allowed us to return to routine Life – whereas their previous known drug, Viagra, allowed us to maintain the cause of life itself, so how can we not marvel?
Why did I know I would draw fire? Because of the cult of vaccine opponents. It is commonly thought that the main damage is in the number of people who have decided not to get vaccinated, but in my opinion this is not the point. The number of people who died after not being vaccinated because of the Pike News spread by the opponents is relatively low. In contrast, their bad injury was the immense damage they caused to the critical discourse on health factors.
Pfizer CEO Albert Burla. Photo: Jerusalem Post Conference
I think, I mean I doubt: this is how I have always been and this is how I remained even in the early days of the corona plague, with a lot of criticism of the health care system and enforcement (how stupid does it seem today to violently arrest a surfer in the sea or a runner in the fields ?!), but the cult, As is the way of extremists, even those addicted to reasoned criticism as a way of life must choose a side. Their drowsiness has silenced any vital criticism, culminating in the failure to provide sufficient information to the public or the disregard (for example) of those who have complained about the side effects of the vaccine, even when it seems like a point worth serious discussion.
Whoever forced me and many like me to choose between a guy like Sadi Ben Sheetrit, for example (of Balfour or of the Corona deniers, we were the same), and Dr. Sharon Elrai Price, should have known that even in days like theirs we do not like to align with the mainstream , When it comes to medical issues, he was chosen by doctors (even they are representatives of the “establishment” RL), and not by those who read a dubious article on some Kikioni website – and became experts on their own. Moreover, the whole discussion was accompanied by an imaginary – and unbearable “voice” of those who were sure that refusing to wear a mask or get vaccinated would make them members of some secret underground.
So after two days in which some talkbackers accused me of getting money from Pfizer (I wish! Fair disclosure: I sliced two dates from the buffet at the Kempinski Hotel, where the interview was held), they went on to argue with their usual rivals: the voices in the lead. And I have no choice but to wish them well and Dr. Burla, who can return to the really important development: not an improved vaccine for Corona, whose power is good for a year, but Viagra whose strength stands for a whole week!