The U.S. has reopened its borders just in time to welcome in Europe’s worrying winter surge in infections. Here we go again.
(Originally published Nov. 10 in “What in the World“) Winter is coming. Well, this winter, it’s Europe’s winter surge in Covid cases that appears to be coming to the U.S. America has opened its borders to vaccinated travelers with only a negative Covid test. Long lines to doodle Yankees have been reported in the United Kingdom, where the sun seems never to set on its astonishing rate of Covid infection.
The polymerase chain reaction tests to determine Covid infection are as accurate as it gets, but may still miss someone who was exposed to infection less than 3 days before the test. That means newly infected passengers from the U.K. could be bringing more than quaint accents to America; they may be carrying the new “Delta-plus” strain, AY.4.2. Once there, they’re likely to meet visitors from Canada, who are also reportedly flocking to the U.S. of A., the better to bring new strains of Covid back home to Canada, where infection rates are blissfully low.
In Germany, meanwhile, the politicians forming a new coalition government aren’t wasting any time; faced with an alarming resurgence in cases, they’re formulating new rules to combat the virus’ spread, including potentially resuming free Covid testing and mandatory testing of people who work in homes for the elderly, whether or not they are vaccinated. France, which is also seeing rising cases despite being 70% vaccinated, isn’t messing around: President Emmanuel Macron just announced that booster shots will be mandatory for those over 65.
The new rules in Europe are a recognition that the Delta strain is producing enough breakthrough cases among the vaccinated to increase the risk of outbreaks and deaths among those still unvaccinated. Both Germany and the U.K. have only managed to vaccinated about two-thirds of their populations, demonstrating that it takes a much higher rate of protection than even 70% to stave off new outbreaks.
The U.S. strategy was to try imposing vaccine mandates. Now the Biden Adminstration is appealing a court-ordered stay on its Jan. 4 vaccine mandate for large employers, arguing that the stay could cost hundreds of lives.
If Biden weren’t the President for all Americans, he could simply drop the mandates and help his political party. According to The New York Times, data reveals that Republicans are less likely to be vaccinated that Democrats and are thus Republican voters are dying at a higher rate from Covid than Democrats. Unvaccinated Texans, 40% of whom are Republican but 45% of whom haven’t been vaccinated, are 40 times more likely to die of Covid-19 than their vaccinated neighbors, according to state data. Because Republicans are people, too—and people with Covid can infect people without Covid whether or not either is vaccinated—we need mandates to overcome the conspiracy theories and other misinformation being fed to these voters.
The demographic gaps in vaccination rates is explored on less partisan lines in an interesting article by Eric Boodman at STAT. Not only are hospitalization rates among the unvaccinated unsurprisingly higher than among the vaccinated, Boodman reports from CDC data, but the ineligibility until recently of children to get vaccines has pulled the average age of Delta hospitalizations down, too. And because Delta manages to infect vaccinated people even if they don’t fall seriously ill, the kind of herd immunity that would protect the unvaccinated is proving increasingly elusive. On the contrary, asymptomatic vaccinated people have become a risk to the remaining unvaccinated.
If American had any kind of public healthcare, it would be able to use a different incentive like Singapore, which has announced it won’t cover healthcare costs for Covid sufferers who are unvaccinated by choice.
