SCIENCE WAS RIGHT. MASK UP AND GET VACCINATED.

In a case of science-told-us-so, COVID-19 has come roaring back — especially in the largely unvaccinated South. Tennessee and Georgia, with less than 40% of residents fully vaccinated, are no exceptions.

Tennessee is fourth from the bottom in vaccinated rates. Georgia is third from the bottom.

Almost all of the new cases are caused by the more deadly and more contagious delta variant, according to health officials.

With the virus surge comes new closures and restrictions, like the mayor’s order to close all of Chattanooga’s reopened recreation centers, like new mask-up guidance from the CDC and a threatened new restriction of visitors to nursing homes.

The problem is a lack of will among our political leaders, it seems to us.

Vaccines should be mandated. So should masks. Consider nursing homes, where the virus first took its high toll last year. Why in the world workers in nursing homes — any medical office or facility, frankly — are not required to be vaccinated is unfathomable.

In the United States and its territories, Tennessee has among the lowest vaccination rates for nursing home facility residents and staff.

Just over 76% of nursing home residents in Tennessee are vaccinated, the eighth-lowest percentage, but only 47.8% of staff are vaccinated, the fifth-lowest, according to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

That kind of nursing home trend is playing out nationwide with vaccination rates among facility residents outpacing rates among staff, Dr. Morgan Katz, assistant professor of infectious disease at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told the Times Free Press recently.

Low uptake among workers is putting residents at risk and slowing the process for reopening facilities to their pre-pandemic visitation policies, she said.

Among the 11 nursing home facilities in Hamilton County tracked by CMS, just two facilities had a resident vaccination rate above 80% — Alexian Village with 92% and Woodland Terrace Care and Rehab with 80%. Not one of the 11 facilities had a staff vaccination rate above 70%, with the lowest rate being Life Care Center of East Ridge with 43% of its staff vaccinated.

On Monday, more than 50 national medical groups — including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Hispanic Medical Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians — issued a joint statement calling on long-term care and other health care employers to require vaccines for staff.

“This is the logical fulfillment of the ethical commitment of all health care workers to put patients as well as residents of long-term care facilities first and take all steps necessary to ensure their health and well-being,” the statement reads.

We could not agree more. But where is the backbone of our elected officials — all of them, from the president to governors to county and city mayors?

Yes, we need backbones in our statehouses, too. After all, it was Tennessee lawmakers in the General Assembly who passed a bill banning schools and colleges from requiring vaccines and later threatened to do away with the Tennessee Department of Health after it pushed vaccines for teens and tweens. The Department of Health then fired the doctor in charge of running the state’s vaccine program.

Just six days ago, under pressure from Tennesseans angered about that fiasco, Gov. Bill Lee, who got his shots in March with no public announcement to show state residents it is safe, urged Tennesseans to get vaccinated but still vacillated on the new mask guidance. He said he doesn’t think schools should follow the new recommendations from U.S. pediatricians for all students and school staff to wear masks.

“That is a district decision in this state, but I suspect most districts will not require masks, and I support that,” Lee said during a news conference on July 22.

Did we mention that early in the pandemic, Lee penned a ban on mask mandates for 89 of Tennessee’s 95 counties?

Even before the delta variant began to roar across our country and region, COVID-19 had claimed more than 600,000 Americans. Now it’s 611,000.

In Hamilton County, with more than 500 killed by the virus, new COVID-19 cases have returned to levels not seen since the tail end of the deadly winter surge in February, when the vaccination campaign was still in its early stages.

The Hamilton County Health Department reported 122 new cases on Tuesday, which amounts to a seven-day moving average of 81 new cases. Test positivity rate has also surged to 13.5% in the past week, indicating a high level of community spread and not enough testing to properly track the virus.

Kudos to the Hamilton County Health Department for recommending — too bad it’s not requiring — that all individuals, vaccinated and unvaccinated, wear masks indoors due to the spread of the delta variant here and the threat of breakthrough cases for vaccinated individuals. The department also “strongly recommends” that all people wear masks in school settings.

Becky Barnes, administrator for the health department, said in a statement Wednesday it is “in the best interest of our community.”

We completely agree. Call your lawmakers and tell them to grow backbones.