We have ample vaccines, they are extremely safe, effective, free and accessible. And yet people are still getting very sick and dying because they refuse to get them. I just don’t know what to say about this anymore:
Some hospitals in Missouri saw a spike in Covid-19 cases by nearly 27% last weekend, which caused some to experience a ventilator shortage.
Dr. Robin Blount with Boone Hospital said the biggest hot spot is southwest Missouri in the Springfield and Joplin area. “I know this morning they were reporting that in Springfield between Mercy and CoxHealth they had over 300 inpatients,” said Blount.
The ventilator issue was happening at Mercy Springfield after the weekend forcing them to bring ventilators from surrounding Mercy hospitals in St. Louis, Northwest Arkansas, and Oklahoma City.
On Monday, Erik Fredrikson with Mercy Springfield tweeted that they are running almost 50 ventilators and searching for more. He said they are expanding a second Covid ICU and have travel nurses coming this week.
Kaitlyn McConnell spokesperson for CoxHealth said they have 96 inpatients with Covid in the system on Tuesday. McConnell said the issue at CoxHealth is not supplies or space, but staffing has been their biggest issue.
As the hospital continues to search for traveling staff and new hires, they have had to transfer 12 patients to other facilities over the weekend in St. Louis, Kansas City, and Columbia.
The Atlantic’s Ed Yeong took a look at the Delta variant and reports that the vaccines are still very effective for people who are fully vaccinated. That’s a relief to many of us, for sure.
But he also writes this:
Another crucial question that “we really need to understand is the nature of transmission from breakthrough cases,” Hanage said. Worryingly, a recent study documented several cases during India’s spring surge in which health-care workers who were fully vaccinated with AstraZeneca’s vaccine were infected by Delta and passed it on.
If other vaccines have similar vulnerabilities, vaccinated people might have to keep wearing masks indoors to avoid slingshotting the virus into unvaccinated communities, especially during periods of high community transmission. “That is unfortunately the direction this is headed,” says Ravindra Gupta, a clinical microbiologist at the University of Cambridge, who led the study. Israel has reimposed a mask mandate, while Los Angeles County and the World Health Organization have advised that vaccinated people should wear masks indoors.
This is because of the unvaccinated who are being ravaged by this variant. Sigh.
And then there’s this:
Many nations that excelled at protecting their citizens are now facing a triple threat: They controlled COVID-19 so well that they have little natural immunity; they don’t have access to vaccines; and they’re besieged by Delta. At the start of this year, Vietnam had recorded just 1,500 COVID-19 cases—fewer than many individual American prisons. But it is now facing a huge Delta-induced surge when just 0.19 percent of its people have been fully vaccinated. If even Vietnam, which so steadfastly held the line against COVID-19, is now buckling under the weight of Delta, “it’s a sign that the world may not have that much time,” Dylan Morris, an evolutionary biologist at UCLA, told me.
It is a terrible indictment of America’s national character that we are so spoiled and so rich that some 30% of our people are refusing vaccines and taxing the health care system out of ignorance and spite while people around the world are desperate for them. That COVID is now killing the countries that actually did the right thing at the beginning of the pandemic (unlike the US) are now being pummeled at a time when vaccines are available is beyond tragic.
