I spent last weekend visiting my parents in Philadelphia. Because of the pandemic we had not seen them in 20(!) months. It was a glorious five-day visit.
During our trip to Philly we mixed in a visit to Donovan's cardiologist (whom he had also not seen in 20 months). We learned two things from that appointment.
First, Donovan's (formerly) narrow pulmonary valve responded amazingly to his October 2019 procedure.
Secondly, Covid is still spreading like wildfire among the unvaccinated, even kids. We learned that pediatric ICUs are full of unvaccinated children with serious and dangerous COVID-19 infections. According to Donovan's cardiologist, "It is now painfully clear that you will either get vaccinated or you will get COVID."
Further proof of our Covid-bifurcated society? Consider the Manatee County, Florida, IT Department, which was just ravaged by a COVID-19 outbreak. According to CNN, of the six people infected, five were hospitalized and two died. They were all unvaccinated. The only exposed employee who did not get infected happened to be the only vaccinated employee.
This is only one example from one workplace. But it's a jarring one. We know that the Delta variant, which is more virulent and more dangerous, is spreading rapidly. Considering that 83 percent of unvaccinated exposed employees in that Florida IT department who became ill ended up hospitalized, and 33 percent died, we see the real-life effects of the Delta variant. According to Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, the Delta variant "is the most transmissible of all the variants that we've seen." Two weeks ago it accounted for 10 percent of all active U.S. infections. Current estimates are that it has now doubled to 20 percent, and that were are mere weeks away from it becoming the predominant variant in the U.S.
* Photo by Hakan Nural on Unsplash