Even after the recent decline in cases, Americans are dying from covid-19 at the pace of 440,000 a year. Deaths from the opioid epidemic, by contrast, reached almost 70,000 last year. Covid-19 is still here and spreading fast.

The principal reason that we are likely not done with the pandemic is that our vaccination rates are just too low. Europe bears this out. In Russia, where a third of adults are vaccinated, cases are at an all time high. Many counties in the United States have similar vaccination rates and, even with higher levels of prior infection, can expect more cases around the corner. Even countries that more closely approximate San Francisco’s vaccination rate of 77 percent, such as Denmark or the Netherlands are seeing rising cases. Cases in California have also started to rise, tripling in the last few weeks.

With previous incarnations of covid-19, more than 70 percent of the population vaccinated along with immunity from prior infections, would likely have been enough to keep new cases at a trickle. Not so with delta. The highly infectious variant doesn’t need much help finding the tens of millions of Americans who are unprotected.