Delta variant drives surge among the unvaccinated
What happened
Covid cases surged across the U.S. this week, rising 50 percent in 31 states as the pace of vaccination stalled and the highly contagious Delta variant spread among the unprotected. U.S. cases doubled to more than 23,000 a day over the past week and hospitalizations rose 21 percent, driven by the now dominant variant from India, which spreads more than 200 percent faster than the original coronavirus. While new infections rose in all but two states, the hardest hit were those with the lowest vaccination rates, including Missouri, Arkansas, Nevada, and Louisiana. Nearly all hospitalizations and 99.5 percent of deaths were among the unvaccinated. “If they’re sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, they are unvaccinated,” said Howard Jarvis, an emergency room doctor in Springfield, Mo. “That is the absolute common denominator.” Hospitals reported an influx of young adults and even some children—in Mississippi, where the 34 percent vaccination rate is well below the national average of 48 percent, seven children were in intensive care. “We have a vast pool of unimmunized people who are a perfect breeding ground for the Delta variant,” said
State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs. “It’s going to kill folks—and it’s already killing folks.”
Pfizer representatives met with federal officials to seek authorization of a booster shot for its Covid vaccine. The company says Israeli data show that its vaccine has reduced effectiveness against the Delta variant, while Pfizer’s own research indicates that a third shot produces a five- to 10-fold boost in antibody levels. But U.S. health officials said they needed more real-world data on how vaccines are performing against Delta, and stated that vaccinated Americans “do not need a booster shot at this time.”
What the editorials said
“Covid-19 is not done with us yet,” said the Los Angeles Times. With mask and distancing restrictions lifted and life returning to normal, “it’s easy to forget that a pandemic is still raging.” But after “steep declines” in infections, we now face “exponential growth” as the Delta variant preys on the tens of millions who’ve rejected safe and highly effective vaccines and “decided to take their chances.” These holdouts need to wake up and “recognize their growing risk.”
The Delta variant is “no cause for panic,” said the New York Post. Yes, it’s more contagious, but numbers from Britain and Israel, which have both suffered Delta spikes, suggest that “vaccines remain highly effective” against serious illness and death. Nonetheless, “overcautious health bureaucrats” are urging even the vaccinated to mask up indoors and questioning school reopening plans. But “the only rational response is to work harder to get the holdouts jabbed.”
What the columnists said
The Trumpist right wing “is becoming a death cult,” said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. How else to explain the “twisted” scene at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where a right-wing author drew cheers when he “crowed” that the U.S. had fallen short of its vaccination goal of 70 percent? Or the relentless peddling of loony anti-vax propaganda by Fox News’ Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson? For this cult, “owning” scientists, mask-wearing libs, and Joe Biden is worth anything—but “they’re owning no one except themselves” and their “loved ones.”
It’s hard to overstate the “sheer insanity” of what’s happening in red states, said Charlie Sykes in TheBulwark.com. You’d think the same crew outraged by masks and distancing might “see the vaccines as a ticket back to normal life.” Instead, they’ve chosen this perilous moment “to go full anti-vax.” The conservative lawmakers and pundits likening college vaccination requirements to apartheid and health workers sent door-to-door to Nazi brownshirts are engaging in “performative demagoguery” that will result in lost lives. Call it what it is: “depraved indifference to human life.”
As America hardens into two camps, those vaccinated and those not, the Delta variant “only exacerbates the divide,” said Sarah Zhang in TheAtlantic.com. For the vaccinated it poses little threat of serious illness—but for stubborn holdouts, “getting infected is probably a matter of time.” A year ago, vaccines were “a distant hope.” Now here we sit, “with too many doses and too few willing arms, at a time when the advantages of vaccination are clearer than ever.”