That reminds me. This is an article I just saw from USA Today.
Look at this headline:
'I'm sorry, but it's too late' - unvaccinated patients beg for shot; new infections nearly triple in two weeks: COVID news
Jesus Christ, doompill much?
The Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine may not be as effective as those with mRNA technology, according to a new study. More COVID-19 updates.
www.usatoday.com
Let's talk about vaccines! The cool thing about them is that we can see the success of vaccines worldwide. As we know, vaccinations are 100% successful at preventing Coronavirus infections, so we can look at a place which is very successful at delivering vaccinations, like Malta. Malta's given an estimated two shots to over 70% of its population (with over
80% having received one shot so far.) These are impressive numbers, and herd immunity evidently comes about once you get over 65-70% (
or around 85%, I think we're still not entirely sure with the Coronavirus just yet). So let's look at Malta. Highest vaccination rate in the world. How are they doing?
https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/malta/ said:
64% of peak and rising
282 infections per 100K people reported last 7 days
Average number of new infections reported each day in Malta rises by more than 190 over the last 3 weeks, 62% of its previous peak
Huh. How are we doing in comparison to that?
https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/united-states/ said:
16% of peak and rising
85 infections per 100K people reported last 7 days
Updated 3:22 AM MDT
COVID-19 infections are increasing in United States, with 40,285 new infections reported on average each day. That’s 16% of the peak — the highest daily average reported on January 7.
So let's do some napkin math. 282 / 85 = ~3.32. Our current number of daily new cases as of July 20th,
according to the CDC, is 46,318. Multiplying that number by 3.32 gets us a whopping
138,954. To put it in perspective, our absolute peak in January of 2021 was 312,332. So Malta, with vaccination closer to herd immunity than you could get anywhere in the world, is (when you equalize population per 100k people) at ~44% of the highest daily new cases that we experienced as of me typing this out right now.
There are, of course, stipulations to this. It doesn't look like Malta's death rate is very high, which is a positive sign. But what the CDC is saying about vaccinations preventing you from getting Coronavirus at all just doesn't seem to hold up to any sort of scrutiny. This isn't going away just because we're opening Biden, and if anything, it seems almost like victim blaming, especially
when we consider why the current unvaccinated population isn't vaccinated: (These are long articles, so I'll just post excerpts that I thought were pertinent)
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/07/unvaccinated-different-anti-vax/619523/ said:
Boyd: Yes, and we tend to hear similar questions among people who are unvaccinated. They may also have heard common threads of disinformation, but they’re still asking basic questions. The top one is around side effects, which are one of the main things we talk about when we give informed consent for any procedure. If people aren’t sure about that, it’s no wonder they’re still saying no.
A lot of vaccine information isn’t common knowledge. Not everyone has access to Google. This illustrates preexisting fault lines in our health-care system, where resources—including credible information—don’t get to everyone. The information gap is driving the vaccination gap. And language that blames “the unvaccinated” misses that critical point. Black folks are one of the least vaccinated groups, in part because they have the least access to preventive health-care services...
Boyd: Yes. The language we use around unvaccinated people comes with a judgment—a condescension that “you’re unvaccinated and it’s your choice at this point.” That attitude is papering Twitter. It’s repeated by our top public-health officials. They’re railing on the unvaccinated as if they’re holding the rest of us back from normalcy. But unvaccinated people aren’t a random group of defectors who are trying to be deviant. They’re not all anti-vaxxers. They’re our kids! Any child under 12 is in that group...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/05/27/time-off-vaccine-workers/ said:
About a quarter of Americans in private industry did not have paid sick leave as of March 2020, according to the most recent data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. An earlier study, which broke this data down by race, ethnicity and education, found that Black and Hispanic workers, as well as workers without college degrees, were less likely to have paid leave than the country as a whole.
Those groups are also less likely to have received at least one dose of a vaccine, according to Kaiser Family Foundation polling...
About 1 in 5 of the unvaccinated Americans in the Kaiser survey said they wanted to get the vaccine as soon as possible. But even for those who did not — the “vaccine hesitant” group — providing paid leave could make a big difference. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that more than half of vaccine-hesitant Hispanic workers would be more likely to get vaccinated if their employers provided time off to recover from side effects.
“Early on, the focus was more on how to get people appointments and have supply to keep up with demand,” Hamel said. “Now, we have enough supply, so it’s more about what is keeping people from getting the vaccine.”
It's more than just political enemies/the stupid/the downright evil and dumb!! doing this, and it's disingenuous and worrying that the Biden administration is doing this. This is getting long, I'm sorry, here's a Tl;dr:
TL;DR: Getting vaccinated alone doesn't seem to be enough to stop the spread, not nearly to the degree that the Biden administration seems to think. (It's still a pandemic, even if you're vaccinated!) There are underlying social conditions and worries which aren't being addressed, and the Biden administration doesn't seem to want to address them. This is, at the very least, pretty concerning!