The View from the Hermitage, Day 490

Reading about vaccine inequity is saddening and angering. European and American officials now say that there was no real early-on thought given to how to handle vaccines globally despite the fact that Moderna injected its vaccine into the first trail participant on March 16, 2020, a mere five days after WHO declared a global pandemic. Every country for itself. That the pandemic struck first and hardest in developed, richer countries and even they were not ready complicated things tremendously. If they could not handle things, how could the poorer countries. Now, with those poorer countries still in desperate need of vaccines, Canada has gotten over 10 doses for each resident, and the US likely has more. Both countries are sharing the vaccine wealth with others but on a very slow scale. 

Virginia is one of two states, New Jersey being the other, to elect a governor the year following a presidential election. I guess they don't want the governor riding the coattails of the president. Our gubernatorial race is heating up, and vaccine mandates are becoming an issue. In April, the state's attorney general issued a legal opinion that colleges and universities have the legal authority to require vaccination for in-person, on-campus attendance. The Republican candidate (who has been endorsed by XPot and who has been mentioned as a possible VP candidate should XPot be the Republican nominee for president in 2024) has said that he would not allow or support vaccine mandates. The Democratic candidate's campaign office did not offer a comment, but I expect they will agree that vaccine mandates are legal. 

In a similar vein, Los Angeles County is reinstating a mask mandate that the sheriff says he and his deputies will not enforce. He says that his department "will not expend our limited resources and instead ask for voluntary compliance." He refused to enforce earlier covid restrictions including the statewide stay-at-home mandate last winter. His deputies don't wear masks either.  Meanwhile, LA County's current average of 1,877 new cases per day is a 272 percent increase from two weeks ago. Hospitalizations are  up 27 percent.

Three of the Texan Democrats who went to Washington, DC in order to prevent passage of a new voting law have tested positive, though all were fully vaccinated. One has mild symptoms; the others are asymptomatic. Since arrival in Washington, the Texans have been wearing masks only sparingly, something I hope changes now. There have been more summer camp outbreaks and stories of some camps sending symptomatic campers home without testing them, something else I hope changes now. 

Covid is currently putting younger, healthy, and mostly unvaccinated people in hospitals at higher rates than earlier in the pandemic. Some relevant words from an infectious disease specialist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana seemed a good way to wrap up the 70th week of this blog despite their suggestion that the end is not necessarily near.

This year's virus in not last year's virus. It's attacking our 40-year-olds. It's attacking our parents and young grandparents, and it's getting our kids. And so understanding how different that is and that we can't take our experience from last year and apply it to today and assume we're going to be OK is our biggest fight right now ... You have to get vaccinated. That's the only way to end it. Masks and mitigation, they're not gonna take it. It's going to be vaccination.

With the percentage of fully vaccinated Americans hovering just below 50 percent, the doc's comments may be the discouraging words I never heard while home on the range.