Vaccines making Thanksgiving safer, but hot spots remain, could get worse

The U.S. is facing its second Thanksgiving of the pandemic in better shape than the first time around, thanks to the vaccine, though some regions are seeing surges of COVID-19 cases that could get worse as families travel for gatherings that were impossible a year ago.

Nearly 200 million Americans are fully vaccinated. That leaves tens of millions who have yet to get a shot, some of them out of defiance. Hospitals in the cold Upper Midwest are filled with COVID-19 patients who are mostly unvaccinated.

Michigan hospitals reported about 3,800 coronavirus patients at the start of the week, with 20% in intensive care, numbers that approach the bleakest days of the pandemic’s 2020 start. The state had the highest seven-day new-case rate in the nation Monday, at 616 per 100,000 people.

In the West, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Montana also ranked high. Some Colorado communities, including Denver, are turning to indoor mask orders to reduce risk, a policy that has also been adopted in the Buffalo, New York, area and Santa Cruz County, California.

The statistics in Michigan are “horrible,” said Dr. Matthew Trunsky, a respiratory specialist at Beaumont Health in suburban Detroit.

“We got cold and moved indoors, and have huge pockets of unvaccinated people,” he said. “You can’t have pockets of unvaccinated people who don’t want to be masked and not expect to … lose parents, not expect to lose teachers.”

“We’ve had several people in their 40s die in the past month — 100% unvaccinated,” Trunsky said. “It’s just so incredibly sad … especially with that age group, it’s nearly 100% preventable.”