I find it almost incomprehensible that people are prematurely opening up around the country again. Apparently, it’s simply impossible to learn from experience in this country:
With each day and each vaccination, the US inches closer to the finish line of what has been a brutal battle against Covid-19.But it’s not over just yet.Infection numbers, after weeks of declines, now seem to have plateaued at high levels. The US has averaged more than 60,000 Covid-19 cases daily in the past week. More than 41,000 people remain hospitalized with the virus nationwide, according to the COVID Tracking Project. And an average of more than 1,700 US Covid-19 deaths were reported every day for the past seven days.
And highly contagious variants that are already circulating have experts worried another Covid-19 spike could be just weeks away. More than 2,700 cases of variants first spotted in the UK, South Africa and Brazil have been reported in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — but the agency has cautioned that’s not the total number of cases in the country, but rather those that have been spotted with the help of genomic sequencing
Spring break could be a perfect storm for spreading coronavirus variants. Don’t let that happenThe vast majority of these cases — at least 2,672 — are the more contagious variant known as B.1.1.7, first spotted in the UK. The variant has been found in 46 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, DC.”That strain is increasing exponentially, it’s spiking up,” infectious diseases specialist and epidemiologist Dr. Celine Gounder told CNN Saturday. “So we are probably right now on a tipping point of another surge.”
Speaking on the dangers of that variant, Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, warned CNN on Friday, “that virus is about to take off in the United States.”The variants are a big reason why experts have repeatedly warned that now is the time to double down on measures that work to curb the spread of the virus — and not ease Covid-19 restrictions.
“There are so many reasons why you don’t want to pull back just now,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN late last week. “You want to plan that you will be able, within a reasonable time, to pull back. But not at a time when we have circulating variants and when you have what looks like a plateauing of the decline in the cases.”
I will never understand this nihilism and cruelty. As an older person who is not old enough to get the vaccine for quite some time where I live, I feel more frightened by this virus than I have since the beginning. The idea of anyone getting COVID-19 now, ending up in the hospital and dying is just unbearably sad to me. I can’t understand why people won’t hold out for just a little while longer so that we don’t have thousands and thousands of unnecessary deaths.
We are on the cusp of having vaccines available for everyone, making it possible for all of us to be safe, but we just have to continue to stay vigilant for the next few months. These people who are having little kids burn their masks and insisting that businesses stop following the guidelines before we get to that point is just mindless contrariness that’s going to kill far more people over the next few months.