ESPN was on in a restaurant last night, showing the WNBA All-Star game. The restaurant was not packed, but many of the tables were filled and a guy was playing classic and ‘90s rock hits on an acoustic guitar. A few people wore masks, but most — including those at my table — did not.
The scene offered a sense of normality, 18 months into a pandemic that has cost the lives of 4 million worldwide and more than 600,000 Americans. It’s a feeling that I think many are taking for granted, but that is possible only because of the widespread acceptance in the Northeast of vaccines.
Nearly 60 percent of New Jerseyans have been fully vaccinated and another 10-15 percent have had at least a single dose. About a third of states are reporting similar numbers. States across the South, in particular, are lagging far behind, and they are seeing new outbreaks caused by the new Delta variant, according to officials there.
As The New York Times reported today, “infections are rising in almost every state,” but “Full-fledged outbreaks have emerged in a handful of places with relatively low vaccination rates, including Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana and Nevada.”
The tens of millions of Americans who are vaccinated are largely protected from the virus, including the Delta variant, scientists have said. And in much of the country, especially the Northeast, the Upper Midwest and the West Coast, case rates remain relatively low. Vermont, the state with the highest vaccination rate, is averaging 11 new cases a day.
Here in New Jersey, we’re averaging between 250 and 325 new cases a day, far lower than the thousands a day we were registering earlier this year and for much of last year. That has allowed us to reopen to a degree.
Still, I have a gnawing sense that we may be getting too far ahead of ourselves. While the nation’s outlook, to use the Times’ language, “remains far better than at previous points in the pandemic,” we are not out of the woods. Too many states are lagging in vaccinations and the threat posed by failing international vaccination programs means COVID is still spreading and mutating.
Many Asian countries, according to the AP, are facing “their worst surge of COVID-19 infections,” which is being exacerbated by “the slow flow of vaccine doses from around the world.” Vaccine shipments have started to reach Southeast Asian countries, and officials there are hopeful “that inoculation rates can increase and help blunt the effect of the rapidly spreading delta variant.” But the numbers are far smaller than they need to be. The impact, as the AP reports, is a region in which governments are “struggling with the overflow of patients and shortages of oxygen and other critical supplies.”
Indonesia is the latest country to report a spike in cases and deaths and a shortage of oxygen and ventilators, according to another Associated Press report. Since the beginning of the pandemic, it has reported “more than 2.4 million infections and 64,631 fatalities from COVID-19,” numbers that international health officials believer are “a vast undercount due to low testing and poor tracing measures.”
The difficulties faced by the developing world are not theoretical, nor should they be seen as distant or unimportant to Americans. As long as the virus has potential hosts, as long as large numbers remain without immunity here and abroad, the virus will spread and mutate. We’ve already witnessed the evolution of numerous variants; they have been more virulent but not more dangerous or deadly, though that could change at any point. As health officials have pointed out from the beginning, spread is not about individuals. It is about the larger society, about ensuring enough of us have immunity either through infection or vaccination. Vaccination, obviously, is the preferred route, given the impact that the virus has on many of its victims. It’s why we are seeing large and deadly outbreaks across the developing world — and in states with low vaccination rates.
This is unlikely to phase many Americans. We feel we have turned a corner. We go to restaurants, bars, shop. We go back to the office, the classroom. We resume our normal lives, watch the WNBA All-Star game, the MLB All-Star game, the NBA finals. We go back to the stadiums and arenas and root on our favorites.
As we sat talking over our drinks last night with ESPN on one of the myriad TVs, the station cut away from Las Vegas, where the women were playing, to the scene at Chase Field in Phoenix. The crowds were packed tightly, as they had been outside the FiServe Arena in Milwaukee just a few days ago. The Suns were up 2-1 over the Bucks in the finals. The fans were out, rabid, excited. The Suns have never won a title. The Bucks have not won since 1971. Someone pointed to the television and said, “that’s a COVID outbreak waiting to happen.”
No one on ESPN or ABC, which is broadcasting the finals, has said anything about COVID, aside from being grateful that fans can attend the games. The potential danger that such gatherings pose to the unvaccinated is the dirty little secret of all of this, especially in states like Arizona, which is middle of the pack on vaccinations, hovering at about 50 percent. Arizona has not experienced a spike in cases, but its rolling daily average of new cases is almost twice that of New Jersey, despite its population being just 60 percent of ours.
Milwaukee ended up winning and tying the series. The fans in Phoenix, packed into an outdoor stadium in the heat, went home, greeted their loved ones, went to work this morning, the web of contacts spreading and spreading.