Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN
We are in the middle of summer, but Covid’s “happy” season is over. Case numbers and hospitalizations have increased. Vaccinations have declined and the US government has labeled vaccine misinformation as a “serious threat to public health”.
“This is not a problem that may take years to solve,” said Jake Tapper, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, abcnews.al reports.
The White House blames Facebook, in part, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the platform needs to move faster to remove misinformation, before people see it and not after it has been posted for days.
The vaccine saves lives and we have them. Public health professionals say any new death from Covid in the US is preventable by a vaccine that the country has in abundance.
Some do not believe them. On the other hand, some Republican lawmakers and governors seem to be actively trying to remove Americans from the vaccine that the health community insists will save lives.
I saw a very sad interview Friday on CNN in which sisters from Arkansas who lost their unvaccinated mother to Covid explained that she just did not think the disease would come to her.
“I tried to be very factual with him about what we know about Covid and that you can get it from someone who has not yet shown symptoms,” Rachel Maginn Rosser told CNN’s Kate Bolduan. “And I really do not know if her opinion really changed. “She was stubborn and so she decided not to do it and in the end did not go for vaccination,” he added.
The vaccine does not completely stop the transmission. There are more and more stories of vaccinated people contracting Covid. But they are not losing their lives, for the most part, being hospitalized.
Three Texas State House Democrats who have been fully vaccinated have come out positive, the Texas House Democratic Group said Saturday.
In the New York Yankees, for the second time this season, there were so-called “progress” cases of Covid in vaccinated players, which postponed Thursday’s planned game against the Red Sox.
I hesitate. Hostility The anti-vaccine rhetoric pushed to Fox News and spread on social media sites like Facebook sounds absurd. Conservatives at CPAC last weekend hailed the idea of low vaccination numbers.
The cases were down. Now they are up. Cases are increasing, to varying degrees, in all 50 states, a sudden change from just a few weeks ago, abcnews.al reports.
Vaccines have stalled. The rate of new vaccines around 302,000 a day is less than a quarter of the high value of 1.3 million vaccines a day during the spring, according to CDC data. Just over half of the US population – 48.4%, or about 160 million people – is fully vaccinated.
In Los Angeles County, officials are reinstating the requirement to wear masks indoors for vaccinated and unvaccinated people. More than 1,500 new cases were reported in Los Angeles on Thursday, up from just 210 in mid-June, according to data from the county, where more than 10 million people live.
“We expect to keep the massacre claims in place until we start to see improvements,” said LA County Health Officer Dr.
Los Angeles has a relatively high level of vaccinations. Other areas, although not as populated, are at risk because their populations are not vaccinated.
Vaccination helps in slow transmission. “If you go to countries where almost all adults and young people are vaccinated, what has the added benefit is really the reduction of the overall level of transmission in the community,” Dr. Peter Hotez, vaccinologist and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told John King to CNN on Friday.
The “Delta” variant may be more transmissible in schools. More Hotez: “The thing that really worries me is here in the South, sometimes the school year starts very early in August. This will be difficult. ”
There is no indication that the FDA will soon authorize Covid vaccines for children under 12 years of age. And many Americans, vaccinated or not, gave up the masks after the CDC said they were not needed, outside or inside, for most situations as long as a person was vaccinated.
Compulsory freedoms. Republican-led states have tried to outdo each other in limiting the power of cities and counties to impose Covid restrictions in the event of a new outbreak.
Cities cannot impose blockades or issue new mask requirements. School districts cannot request masks, even though children do not currently qualify for vaccines.
