But there are several other immediate pathways for thinking about why things are playing out so unlike in the U.S. The U.K.’s vaccination strategy was substantially different from the American one, despite the overall similarity of vaccination rates. It could also be that American unvaccinated people were spread more unevenly through the country than the unvaccinated in the British context, with different epidemiological effects.
Looking at Florida, though, one thing stands out. For reasons few epidemiologists could understand, the state had not been hit as hard as neighboring places with similar populations and politics. Look at almost any metric before the Delta wave, and Florida fared pretty well relative to New York, California, or Illinois. Not until the current Delta wave has Florida experienced a surge comparable to those seen in other big states.
The U.K., by contrast, was hit with two massive COVID-19 waves in which the death rate was nearly twice what it was in the U.S. That suggests that a much greater percentage of the U.K. contracted the virus, giving them some natural immunity. The virus may have run out of bodies to attack.
Perhaps, in Florida, the state’s good fortune in previous waves—along with the political opposition to societal countermeasures—could be one of the factors driving this gigantic increase in COVID-19.
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