The Delta variant of COVID-19 is ripping through the country, especially the upper Midwest and parts of the Southeast. On Wednesday, official new cases were 84,700, pushing the 7-day average up to 66,900. This is more than double India’s, a nation with four times the population, and getting worse. And just because Delta is more infectious doesn’t mean that it is less potent. Nationwide hospitalizations jumped 43.2% last week, and are now up 250% over the last month. Deaths climbed 21% over the last week. The country is now paying for ignoring India’s requests for vaccines in March and April, giving the Delta variant a wide berth for its emergence — all so that we could hoard hundreds of millions of unused doses, now 300 million and counting.
The Arkansas Children’s Hospital admitted 24 children with COVID-19 on Wednesday, 50% more than any at previous peak. None were vaccinated, though more than half of them were eligible. Dr. Rick Barr, the chief clinical officer, stated: “This is the worst that we’ve seen it for kids, absolutely.” Hospitals report that parents are stunned and horrified when they actually see the battle to save their lives, with reports from doctors and nurses of “new-found religion” amongst parents now proselytizing their friends and neighbors on vaccines — Arkansas’s vaccinations have almost doubled in the last two weeks. Nationally, vaccinations picked up off the floor and have climbed back to about 380,000/day over the last week — about an eighth of the country’s demonstrated capacity to inoculate.
There are approximately 40 million vaccine doses stored in states, or over 100 days worth, at present levels of usage. Further, the Federal government has about 300 million more doses un-ordered by states, with several hundred million on order. Last week, the medical news outlet Stat reported that “several state health departments” had recently called on the Federal government to “redistribute their supply to other countries,” pointing to fears the doses would soon go bad. “We’re drowning in this stuff,” Robert Ator, who heads up Arkansas’s vaccine roll-out, said of the state’s stockpile. “It’s starting to get a bit silly....” The FDA did give the Johnson & Johnson vaccine another reprieve, extending its allowable storage time from 4.5 to 6 months
So, Delta 1, US 0 — and now the country gets to squabble over whether they were promised no masking if they rolled up their sleeves for the jab, and whom do they blame. And the coronavirus and its cousins are not negotiating.
