Latrinsorm
08-25-2021, 01:43 PM
When we vaccinate everyone in the United States, cases and therefore deaths drop to practically zero - not because vaccines are perfect, but because they are strong enough that there wouldn't be enough viable hosts for the virus to continue spreading.
In addition to smallpox and polio, this would also work for COVID-19.
We are currently very far from vaccinating everyone - only 61% of Americans have received at least one dose, and about 20% of the population can't be vaccinated at all due to age.
And so, how close do we have to get to 100% before we can expect the current explosion in deaths of our vaccinated and unvaccinated populations to start knocking it off already?
And so, we turn to brave Israel, who reached our current level of vaccination in April and continue to be among world leaders.
Israel, where in the two week period of 06/19-07/02 saw one (1) COVID death in the entire nation...
...but cases were rising, and in fact at 2661 were ten times as great as the previous two week period.
And so they took swift and decisive action, reimposing national mask mandates.
As always, I celebrated (http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?129855-On-the-Burning-Prime-Ministerdom) people doing the right thing whether they were right left or center.
As always, I warned that although US cases were stable and deaths were declining at the time, foreign evidence irrefutably proved they were going to go sharply up, and soon.
As always, I was right.
Let us return to Israel.
From 07/03-07/16 Israel saw 14 COVID deaths.
From 07/17-07/30 Israel saw 34 COVID deaths.
From 07/31-08/13 Israel saw 172 COVID deaths.
They weren't seeing 2661 cases every two weeks.
They were seeing 2661 cases every day.
So far in the 08/14-08/26 period (obviously not over yet) Israel has seen 234 COVID deaths.
With much better vaccination, and much better mitigation, they are still seeing growth.
Our summer spike started a month later.
We're already twice as high in daily deaths.
How much higher do we have to get before we realize we have to go above and beyond brave Israel?
Even a national mask mandate at this point wouldn't be enough. It would save hundreds of thousands of lives, but it wouldn't get us back to pre-pandemic life.
We all see the graphs. We all see that the higher we start from when we finally begrudgingly take action, the longer it takes to get back to reasonable numbers.
So what are we waiting for?
In addition to smallpox and polio, this would also work for COVID-19.
We are currently very far from vaccinating everyone - only 61% of Americans have received at least one dose, and about 20% of the population can't be vaccinated at all due to age.
And so, how close do we have to get to 100% before we can expect the current explosion in deaths of our vaccinated and unvaccinated populations to start knocking it off already?
And so, we turn to brave Israel, who reached our current level of vaccination in April and continue to be among world leaders.
Israel, where in the two week period of 06/19-07/02 saw one (1) COVID death in the entire nation...
...but cases were rising, and in fact at 2661 were ten times as great as the previous two week period.
And so they took swift and decisive action, reimposing national mask mandates.
As always, I celebrated (http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?129855-On-the-Burning-Prime-Ministerdom) people doing the right thing whether they were right left or center.
As always, I warned that although US cases were stable and deaths were declining at the time, foreign evidence irrefutably proved they were going to go sharply up, and soon.
As always, I was right.
Let us return to Israel.
From 07/03-07/16 Israel saw 14 COVID deaths.
From 07/17-07/30 Israel saw 34 COVID deaths.
From 07/31-08/13 Israel saw 172 COVID deaths.
They weren't seeing 2661 cases every two weeks.
They were seeing 2661 cases every day.
So far in the 08/14-08/26 period (obviously not over yet) Israel has seen 234 COVID deaths.
With much better vaccination, and much better mitigation, they are still seeing growth.
Our summer spike started a month later.
We're already twice as high in daily deaths.
How much higher do we have to get before we realize we have to go above and beyond brave Israel?
Even a national mask mandate at this point wouldn't be enough. It would save hundreds of thousands of lives, but it wouldn't get us back to pre-pandemic life.
We all see the graphs. We all see that the higher we start from when we finally begrudgingly take action, the longer it takes to get back to reasonable numbers.
So what are we waiting for?