> It would be hard for individual countries to do any worse.
It would be pretty easy for any individual countries that don't actually produce vaccines to do worse.
Just look at Canada, for instance. It's a rich country that hoarded vaccine pre-orders (Enough to vaccinate its population three times over), and what was the result? A lower vaccination rate than the EU. That's because Canada does not control any part of the R&D or manufacturing process, so its orders got pushed to the back of the line. And neither do most of the countries in the EU.
What makes you think Slovakia or Greece, or Italy are going to be any better off? What makes you think that if vaccine procurement were up to each individual country, that any of those countries would see a single dose before, say, Belgium reached 100% vaccination?
By having the best distribution system in the world, and by leveraging that into a promise to gather data on vaccine efficacy before anyone else can.
This trick only works for one small wealthy country. Nobody cares so much about the second fastest set of vaccination health data that they will prioritize shipments to your country. Slovakia and Greece would still be shit out of luck.
It's like pointing at a lottery winner, and saying - 'look, this is the strategy you all should be emulating to get out of poverty.' The problem is, there is only one winner, and there is only one guinea pig of a country that will commit itself to being a case study for a fast, full rollout, as long as it gets priority on vaccines.
Also, Israel's impressive vaccination statistics conveniently ignore its Palestinian population, which is not getting those doses.
