The U.S. has topped 35 million COVID-19 cases and, in doing so, has taken a huge step backwards. According to Johns Hopkins University, there have been 35,001,589 COVID-19 cases resulting in 613,223 deaths representing a mortality rate of 1.8%.
We have taken a big step backwards because we have added 1 million new COVID-19 cases in only 16 days. Mind you, it took 58 days to go from 33 million to 34 million cases.
This country has essentially gone from adding 1 million new COVID-19 cases in two months to adding 1 million new COVID-19 cases in two weeks. That is not good.
Let me put it another way. It took 25 days to get from 32 million to 33 million cases. So now we're back at the pace we were at in March and April when we added 1 million new cases every 16 days at which time Americans were being vaccinated in earnest.
It might not be so bad if we had reached herd immunity, but a critical mass of Americans simply refuses to be vaccinated. Half the U.S. adult population has been fully vaccinated but it isn't enough. As long as this state of affairs prevails then masks and crowd limits will be a permanent part of American life though you wouldn't know it if one was at Lollapalooza in Chicago or at the Sturgis Bike Rally this weekend.
At the rate we're going we'll probably add 2 million more cases by Labor Day and things will probably accelerate from there. Again, it would be manageable if people were to get vaccinated. But when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sells merchandise discouraging people from getting vaccinated and his state leads the nation in infections things aren't going to get better anytime soon.
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