Summer of hope ends in gloom — thanks to variant
WASHINGTON — The summer that was supposed to mark America’s independence from COVID-19 is instead drawing to a close with the U.S. more firmly under the tyranny of the virus, with deaths per day back up to where they were last March.
The delta variant is filling hospitals, sickening alarming numbers of children and driving coronavirus deaths in some places to the highest levels of the entire pandemic. School systems that reopened their classrooms are abruptly switching back to remote learning because of outbreaks. Legal disputes, threats and violence have erupted over mask and vaccine requirements.
The U.S. death toll stands at more than 650,000, with one major forecast model projecting it will top 750,000 by Dec. 1.
“It felt like we had this forward, positive momen- tum,” lamented Katie But- ton, executive chief and CEO at two restaurants in Ashe- ville, North Carolina.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. More than six months into the U.S. vaccination drive, President Joe Biden held a White House party on July Fourth to cele- brate the country’s freedom from the virus, and other political leaders had high hopes for a normal summer. Then the bottom fell out. The summer wave was fueled by the extra-contagious delta variant combined with stark resistance to vaccinations that formed along political and geographic lines, said Dr. Sten Vermund, of the Yale School of Public Health. “The virus was more efficient in spreading among the unvaccinated so that you blunted the expected benefit of vaccines,” Vermund said.
The crisis escalated rapidly from June to August. About 400,000 COVID-19 infec- tions were recorded for all of June. It took all of three days last week to reach the same number.
The U.S. recorded 26,800 deaths and more than 4.2 mil- lion infections in August. The number of monthly positive cases was the fourth-highest total of the pandemic.
The delta-driven onslaught is killing younger Americans at a much higher rate than previous waves of the pandemic in the Northeast last spring, the Sun Belt in the summer of 2020 and the deadly holiday surge.