After an all too brief respite, the United States is again at a crossroads in the pandemic. The number of infections has ticked up — slowly at first, then swiftly — to 51,000 cases per day, on average, more than four times the rate a month ago. The country may again see overflowing hospitals, exhausted health care workers and thousands of needless deaths.
The more contagious Delta variant may be getting the blame, but fueling its rise is an older, more familiar foe: vaccine hesitancy and refusal, long pervasive in the United States. …
From the start, vaccinations in counties that voted for Donald J. Trump lagged those in counties that voted for Joseph R. Biden, and the gap has only widened — from two percentage points in April to nearly 12 points now, according to one recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Nationwide, 86 percent of Democrats have had at least one shot, compared with 52 percent of Republicans, according to another poll. CONTINUED
Apoorva Mandavilli, New York Times
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