The US epidemic — and people’s risk from Covid-19 — has changed in this latest wave of cases.
Even as the current surge of Covid-19 in the United States surpasses those in the spring and summer of 2020, trailing only the devastating winter wave, it is being driven by a different mix of cases than the prior waves. Back then, the coronavirus was still new and most people had no immunity to it. The vaccines were still months away. When cases started to rise, experts issued dire warnings that deaths would soon rise in accordance. They were right. But this wave comes as the US is hitting a milestone: 70 percent of the over-18 population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. There are still large pockets of the country without robust protection, with vaccination rates lagging in the 40s. Those places are driving the current surge. Still, immunity is much more widespread now, and medical care for Covid-19 is much improved. As a result, deaths are (so far) not rising at nearly the same rate as cases. That would be the hope in a more vaccinated world: Even if some people still get infected, the virus is more likely to be a temporary annoyance than a life-threatening event. The vaccinated can expect that protection, even as the delta variant takes hold, but the unvaccinated are facing a more dangerous virus on their own. What distinguishes this wave from those that preceded is the different types of Covid-19 cases we’re seeing now, compared to a year ago.1) Unvaccinated people They are by far the largest share of new cases, according to public health experts and the available data. As Vox’s German Lopez reported, unvaccinated people make up 90 percent of confirmed new cases — or more — in every state with case data that denotes vaccination status. Those people are facing a virus that has mutated to become more dangerous. Some unvaccinated people will feel mild or even no symptoms. That’s been true from the start of the pandemic. But data out of the United Kingdom indicates that the now-dominant delta variant is leading to more hospitalizations — and all the available data shows that it’s much more transmissible than previous variants. With different states and regions seeing strikingly different vaccination rates, some places are more at risk than others of rapid spread. That is playing out in the case data. The South, which has some of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, is seeing twice as many new cases per capita as the West, the second hardest-hit region right now, according to the New York Times’s tracker. These outbreaks are driving America’s surge in cases. Mississippi ranks last in vaccinations per capita and fourth in new cases. Louisiana is fourth to last in vaccinations and first in new cases. At the municipal level, the rise in cases is also being driven by unvaccinated people.
