Even more worrying than rising case rates are a 41.1 percent increase in the seven-day average of new hospitalizations last week, as compared to the week ending on June 26, and a 39.3 percent rise in deaths during roughly the same period. There is now an average of 381 coronavirus deaths per day. Deaths fell below 300 per day in June, but, like infection rates, have risen since then.
For much of the summer, the nation appeared to be in a post-pandemic mindset, even as Delta was already spreading. “President Biden absolutely declared a victory too soon,” Wen recently told Yahoo News, referring to his July 4 address on “our independence from a deadly virus.”
Those remarks came after a spring that saw more than 100 million Americans vaccinated. As vaccination rates continued to climb, the public and many elected leaders appeared to exhale and relax.
That looks to have been a mistake.
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