The contagious delta variant is driving up COVID-19 hospitalizations in the Mountain West and fueling disruptive outbreaks in the North, a worrisome sign of what could be ahead this winter in the U.S.
While trends are improving in Florida, Texas and other Southern states that bore the worst of the summer surge, it’s clear that delta isn’t done with the United States. COVID-19 is moving north and west for the winter as people head indoors, close their windows and breathe stagnant air.
“We’re going to see a lot of outbreaks in unvaccinated people that will result in serious illness, and it will be tragic,” said Dr. Donald Milton of the University of Maryland School of Public Health.
In recent days, a Vermont college suspended social gatherings after a spike in cases tied to Halloween parties. Boston officials shut down an elementary school to control an outbreak. Hospitals in New Mexico and Colorado are overwhelmed.
In Michigan, the three-county metro Detroit area is again becoming a hot spot for transmissions, with one hospital system reporting nearly 400 COVID-19 patients. Mask-wearing in Michigan has declined to about 25% of people, according to a combination of surveys tracked by an influential modeling group at the University of Washington.
“Concern over COVID in general is pretty much gone, which is unfortunate,” said Dr. Jennifer Morse, medical director at health departments in 20 central and northern Michigan counties. “I feel strange going into a store masked. I’m a minority. It’s very different. It’s just a really unusual atmosphere right now.”
New Mexico is running out of intensive care beds despite the state’s above-average vaccination rate. Waning immunity may be playing a role. People who were vaccinated early and have not yet received booster shots may be driving up infection numbers, even if they still have some protection from the most dire consequences of the virus.
“Delta and waning immunity — the combination of these two have set us back,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington. “This virus is going to stick with us for a long, long time.”
The delta variant dominates infections across the U.S., accounting for more than 99% of the samples analyzed.
No state has achieved a high enough vaccination rate, even when combined with infection-induced immunity, to avoid the type of outbreaks happening now, Mokdad said.
In a deviation from national recommendations, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order Thursday that allows any resident 18 or older access to a COVID-19 booster shot, another step to prevent hospitals and health care workers from being overwhelmed by the state’s surge in delta infections.
Progress on vaccination continues, yet nearly 60 million Americans age 12 and older remain unvaccinated. That’s an improvement since July, when 100 million were unvaccinated, said White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients.
First shots are averaging about 300,000 per day, and the effort to vaccinate children ages 5 to 11 is off to a strong start, Zients said at a briefing Wednesday.
Virginia Tech’s Linsey Marr, a leading researcher on the airborne spread of the coronavirus, predicted the northward spread of the virus in a Twitter post Sept. 15. The virus spreads in the air and can build up in enclosed rooms with poor ventilation. Colder weather means more people are indoors breathing the same air, Marr said.
Imagine that everyone you spend time with is a smoker and you want to breathe as little of their smoke as possible, she said.
“The closer you are to a smoker the more exposure you have to that smoke,” Marr said. “And if you’re in a poorly ventilated room, the smoke builds up over time.”
Marr said she and her vaccinated family will use rapid tests before gathering for Christmas to check for infection.
“It’s hard to know what’s coming next with this virus,” Marr said. “We thought we knew, but delta really surprised us. We thought the vaccine would help end this, but things are still dragging on. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen next.”
(AP)
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3 Responses
From the overflowing coffers of Big Pharma to your baloney grinder. This is audacious propaganda.
Tens, if not hundreds of nurses and other institutional health practitioners from around the country have bravely gone on record bearing witness that since around March and ‘the Delta Variant’, the covid cases are dissimilar to the earlier ones, and that the symptoms are almost solely victimizing those who took the ‘covid shot’ (it is an experimental mRNA injection and called a ‘vaccine’ in name only – to attempt to ease the populace from their fears – which unfortunately, are legitimate).
The shot actually contains the synthesized virus strains that is being called ‘covid’. (The PCR test does not actually ascertain ‘covid’ which is not an actual virus that has ever been isolated – it is an creative rendering by a ‘fill-in-the-blanks’ computer software algorithm that creates its profile from the common cold and other known viruses, and decrees ‘covid positive’ based on the degree of amplitude of the test to any significant correlation with other isolated viruses.)
This is a sophisticated bank robbery where the bank employees are coerced to wear masks (and also get shot up to keep their jobs!) while the ‘magic vaccine’ patent holders run off with taxpayer funded government payments for the unsafe manufacturing and promulgation of these totally unproved, largely untested, and dangerous ‘remedies’. This is how they are ‘running away with the loot’ — and with world democracy and human rights as well.
To all you anti-vaxxers:- Shame on you!! Shame on you!!
Go & get vaxxed immediately, and comply with the פסק of the venerated גדול הדור:- Moreinu HoRav חיים Kanievsky שליא”א and desist from even thinking that you know better than the venerated גדול הדור
147- this is NOT a vaccine. With all other vaccines we know whoever has antibodies is immune and doesn’t need a shot. If you had measles..mumps….you’re immune. U will not need the vaccine.
Now the gov’t, and big pharma, (NOT THE DOCTORS AND SCIENTISTS)are pushing this unproven “vaccine agenda” on a giant world lab.
Do you want to be their next guinea pig? Leave the rest of us alone, the ones who have actually researched the science.