It feels as if -at least around where I am- there’s a sense of things just about to slip back into some kind of normal.
We’re not there, but the COVID-19 numbers are dropping quite a bit and the amount of vaccinations is high. However, the number of people vaccinated each day is starting to… drop.
In early/mid April we were getting to the point of having 3 million plus vaccinations per day, but the latest numbers have gone down to some 2 million per day (check out the stats here).
The thing that worries some is that there are those who are resistant to getting a vaccination. Be they anti-vaccers (sadly, I know at least two) or simply in some kind of political denial (looking at you, Ted Nugent).
Regardless, according to the latest statistics, 32.3% of the U.S. total population now has gotten the full vaccination(s) (ie, if you had Moderna or Pfizer, you got both shots versus the one shot for Johnson & Johnson). Obviously, the number is higher when talking about people who have had but one shot and are waiting for the second and final one.
Regardless and according to this article, the so-called “Herd Immunity” for COVID-19 is expected when some 70-80% of the U.S. population has been vaccinated. Given where we’re at, we’ve need to double the current amount of people vaccinated to be approaching this level.
Plus, there remains the problems outside the U.S., particularly in India, which present the scary possibility of the COVID-19 virus mutating and maybe becoming resistant to vaccines.
This hasn’t happened yet -current vaccines appear to work against the variants- but it could happen.
At times and while reading the various articles on the subject, It feels like we’re on some kind of razor’s edge, with the possibility things moving either way.
I try to be optimistic but notice that less and less people seem interested/willing to mask up. Though I have already had both my vaccinations, I still mask up whenever I’m around others and do try to keep my distance even then.
I’ll be really curious to see where we are in one, then two months’ time. It’s possible we’ll see considerable drops in both infection rates and (crossing fingers) deaths but, again, it depends on how many people decide they should get vaccinated versus those who are resisting.
We’ll see.