With Europe battling a ferocious winter wave of Covid infections, the U.S. is already being seemingly dragged back into the global pandemic.

(Originally published Nov. 23 in “What in the World“) Europe is digging in against Covid’s latest westward offensive, with some calling for vaccine mandates and Germany’s health minister calling for further restrictions against the unvaccinated and warning that by winter’s end everyone there will be “vaccinated, recovered or dead.” Those unfortunate enough to fall into the latter category appear to be growing as the temperature falls.

The good news is that Europe is poised to this week approve vaccines for kids five to 11 years old. And Germany is taking a page from the Pentagon’s book and requiring that all its troops get vaccinated.

Cases are also back on the rise in the U.S., forcing Minnesota to call up the national guard as Covid cases overwhelm state hospitals. Vaccination of kids may prove the one thing that keeps the U.S. from suffering as severe a wave as Europe this winter. U.S. vaccination rates are only slightly higher than Europe’s and plateaued long ago, meaning immunity is starting to wane and the population of individuals vulnerable to infection.

Roughly 10% of Americans have already received a booster shot, suggesting that about a third of the population is at renewed risk of infection as their immunity fades and they join the 40% who still haven’t bothered to get the jab. That means 70% of the country could be vulnerable to infection again by Christmas.

This has intensified concerns that rich countries in the northern hemisphere are hogging all the available supply of vaccines, thereby depriving people in poorer nations of their first shots. But those concerns are being offset by the admission by Gavi that poorer countries lack the infrastructure to administer vaccines even if they were delivered: they don’t have the refrigeration required to store vaccines until they’re given, they lack sufficient syringes to inject them and they don’t have enough trained people to give the shots.