COVID-19 Threatening Holiday Season in US
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Reports indicate that the numbers of Americans traveling this year for Thanksgiving will reach pre-pandemic levels, posing a large threat for the unvaccinated individuals and communities.
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A highly infectious holiday season might await the US.
A surge in Coronavirus cases in the US for the first time in weeks, now approaching 100,000 per day, might signal a highly infectious holiday season right ahead.
Anthony Fauci, the US government’s chief medical adviser, warned on Sunday that “time was running short” to thwart a “dangerous” rise of COVID-19 infections that would naturally overwhelm the holidays.
The alarm is sounding even louder with thanksgiving at the door, which would most certainly lead to tens of millions of US citizens traveling for indoor celebrations and gatherings.
The medical adviser noted that there might still be an opportunity to avert calamity if the public acted on new measures to soothe the situation. Fauci was referring to the latest approval of booster shots for adults as well as the recent authorization of vaccines for children from the age of five to 11.
Speaking about the large number of unvaccinated people in the US, Fauci counseled against their approach by saying “We still have about 60 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who have not been, and that results in the dynamic of virus in the community that not only is dangerous and makes people who are unvaccinated vulnerable, but it also spills over into the vaccinated people.”
He also stressed the importance of being vaccinated, getting booster shots and vaccinating children from five to 11 “starting now”, which would allow them to be completely protected come Christmas.
At a time when the Biden administration is struggling to convince the rest of the population to get vaccinated, reports indicate that the numbers of Americans traveling this year for Thanksgiving will reach pre-pandemic levels.
This is most worrying for a number of reasons, chiefly among them the fact that the daily average of new cases has risen 29% in the past two weeks, whilst less than 60% of those eligible are fully vaccinated.
Most importantly, the 2021 US death toll for COVID-19 has exceeded that of 2020.
