A mutating threat from Covid-19
What happened
With new cases of Covid-19 steadily declining in the U.S. and the vaccination rollout speeding up, scientists were warning states this week to keep social-distancing measures in place to protect against fast-spreading variants of the disease. Some 79,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with the coronavirus, the lowest number in nearly three months, and the U.S. is now reporting just under 100,000 new cases a day—less than half of last month’s peak. Vaccinations are picking up: 10 percent of Americans have now received at least one shot and about
1.4 million doses are being administered per day. To accelerate the speed of inoculation, the Biden administration authorized the deployment of 1,100 active-duty troops to help build and man mass-vaccination sites.
A new study found that cases of the U.K. Covid variant, which is up to 40 percent more infectious than earlier strains, are doubling every 10 days in the U.S. By March, the variant is expected to be the dominant strain in the country. We’re “in the eye of the hurricane,” said Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine. “The big wall is about to hit us again.” Health experts are also worried by a highly contagious variant that has caused a massive second wave in South Africa and appears able to evade some of the vaccines. South Africa halted distribution of AstraZeneca’s shot this week after a small-scale clinical trial suggested it was only about 10 percent effective against the variant. At least six cases of the strain have been detected in the U.S.
What the columnists said
States are easing Covid-19 restrictions at the worst possible time, said Holly Yan and Christina Maxouris in CNN.com. Iowa and North Dakota have taken the recent dip in case numbers as an invitation to drop mask mandates, while New Jersey and New York are allowing indoor restaurants to reopen at 35 percent and 25 percent capacity, respectively. But letting our guard down now will allow the “highly contagious variants to trample the U.S.” At least 463,000 Americans have already died of Covid. How many more will perish needlessly in the coming months?
Joe Biden promised “over and over again” on the campaign trail that he had a plan to end the pandemic quickly, said Jim Geraghty in NationalReview.com. Yet it’s now being reported that his Covid response team thinks the U.S. might not reach herd immunity— which will require about 80 percent of the population to be inoculated—until at least Thanksgiving. President Biden can argue that the Trump administration botched the initial rollout, but if the pace of vaccinations doesn’t accelerate soon, that’s all on him.
To beat this disease, we can’t just focus on our own nation, said Dr. Ashish Jha in The Washington Post. Runaway outbreaks will always produce viral mutations, and travel bans won’t stop variants born overseas from reaching our shores. That’s why the U.S. must launch a “Manhattan Project–like effort” to build factories here and abroad that could produce billions of vaccines “for the entire world.” Like it or not, “we really are in this together.”