A restaurant employee cleans a outdoor patio table at Benny’s Cafe prior to the Texas’ scheduled reopening of businesses during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on April 27, 2020, in Colleyville, Texas. Despite concerns about lifting mask mandates, Texas and Mississippi haven’t seen massive spikes in coronavirus cases, and both states reported new case numbers not seen since last year.
Texas and Mississippi lifted their mask mandates on March 2, much to the dismay of federal public health officials and President Joe Biden, who said they worried it would counteract the progress of vaccination efforts. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, still isn’t sold on Texas’ success, but a month after restrictions were lifted, cases have remained under control.
Dr. Thomas Dobbs, a Mississippi state health officer, tweeted that the state was seeing “phenomenal progress” in its battle against the virus and was reporting the lowest case numbers since last May. Liz Sharlot, communications director for the Mississippi State Department of Health, told Newsweek vaccinations are a key reason for why they’ve kept cases down. A “great deal” of the population that is over 50 has been vaccinated, including 54 percent of those 75 and older who have received both doses.
“We know those 50 and older have the highest mortality rates. We also know African Americans are at higher risk,” Sharlot said. “We reached racial parity with our African American outreach and also offer many different and unique opportunities to obtain the vaccine.”
In the past four weeks, Black Mississippians have received doses equal to or higher than their share of the population, according to Mississippi Today. Dobbs attributed part of the success to community partners working to spread the word about the need to get vaccinated. Jerry Young, pastor of New Hope Baptist Church and president of the National Baptist Convention, told Mississippi Today he’s seen a decrease in hesitancy because of his advocacy.
Vaccines are key to achieving herd immunity and an integral part of ending the pandemic. Mississippi officials are encouraging people to get vaccinated, and although there’s no official mandate, Sharlot advised people to still wear masks and avoid large gatherings. Texas is also reporting a decline in cases and is reporting new cases at levels that haven’t been seen since May, according to the state Department of Health. On Monday, the state reported only three COVID-related fatalities, the second-lowest number in more than a year, according to Governor Greg Abbott, and hospitalizations were down to an almost 10-month low.
Given the nature of the virus, it takes at least two weeks to analyze the impact a reopening move has on the outbreak, and even longer to determine if it contributed to increased hospitalizations and deaths. Fauci warned against seeing Texas’ positive trends as a final blow against the virus, because you can see a “lag” and a “delay” in reopening and the impact. “You have to see in the long range,” he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday. “I hope they continue to tick down. If they do, that would be great but…we’ve been fooled before by situations where people begin to open up and nothing happens and then all of a sudden several weeks later things start exploding on you.”
Fauci added that people need to be cautious and not to “prematurely” judge Texas’ reopening. Newsweek reached out to the Texas State Department of Health for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
The surge in cases comes at a pivotal moment in the country’s battle against the coronavirus.
As states work to ramp up vaccination efforts to avoid another wave of infection. The figures underscore the problems in those communities and the dangers of COVID-19 variants.
The U.S. had 452,825 coronavirus infections reported throughout the United States in the past week, according to state health agency data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Nearly 197,500 cases can be traced back to New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. That’s 43.6 percent of all cases. This trend was first reported by The Associated Press on Monday.
These five states, the AP noted, account for just 22 percent of the U.S. population.
Michigan, according to the AP, recorded the highest rate of new infections in the past two weeks. The wire service reported that the seven-day average of new cases in Michigan reached 6,719 on Sunday, which is more than double what it was two weeks prior. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, however, signaled that she is not likely to tighten restrictions amid the surge, the AP noted. She instead blamed the increase in numbers on pandemic fatigue and more contagious variants.
Additionally, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D), have not publicly asked the federal government for more vaccines amid the surge in cases, The AP reported. Murphy, the wire service noted, has said he is continuously talking to the White House about the demand for the vaccine, but he has not mentioned any lobbying efforts.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), on the other hand, has consistently pleaded publicly for the need for more vaccines in the city, the AP noted. Across the country, more than 75 percent of people ages 65 and older have received at least one vaccine shot, in addition to more than 40 percent of all adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A majority of states have now opened vaccine eligibility to all adults, after President Biden set a May 1 deadline for all adults to be eligible for inoculation. On Tuesday, Biden moved that target date up to April 19. Also on Tuesday, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci tamped down on fears of another wave of the coronavirus hitting the U.S., telling MSNBC “As long as we keep vaccinating people efficiently and effectively, I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”
“That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to still see an increase in cases,” Fauci added. Medical experts, however, are still urging governors to maintain mitigation precautions for a little while longer, including mask wearing, distancing from others, and avoiding crowds.
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They’re young, they’re restless, and across the United States they’re driving the latest wave of Covid-19 cases. Fed up with pandemic restrictions and lulled into a false sense of security by the increasing rate of vaccinations, coronavirus wards at local hospitals are increasingly being populated by younger, still-unvaccinated adults who’ve let their guard down, the nation’s top public health experts are warning.
“It is premature to declare a victory,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, said Tuesday at the National Press Club. “We’re seeing more and more young people get into serious trouble, namely severe disease, requiring hospitalization and occasionally even tragic deaths in quite young people.”
Fauci’s warning echoed earlier remarks by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We are now entering our fourth week of increased trends in cases,” Walensky said Monday. “The trends and data have been indicating cases are increasing nationally as we are seeing this occur predominantly in younger adults.”
In particular, Walensky said, “many outbreaks in young people are related to youth sports and extracurricular activities” that involve their parents. Part of the problem is that Americans have become less afraid of catching Covid-19, even though slightly less than a fifth of the country’s population has been fully vaccinated, the latest NBC News figures show.
In a recent Gallup Poll, just 35 percent of Americans responding to a survey done March 15-21 said they were worried about contracting the coronavirus — a 14 percentage point drop from February and well below the 59 percent record that was set in April 2020 in the early months of the pandemic. While the biggest decline of 21 percent was among people over 65, the group most likely to be vaccinated, there were also big drops in the percentages of people worried about catching the virus in the 18-44 and 44-64 groups, the poll showed.
Meanwhile, Covid-19 outbreaks linked to younger people have shut down day care centers in Nebraska and Wisconsin and caused cases to quadruple in at least one Connecticut town. In states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Maryland, the number of younger people in hospital Covid-19 wards is on the rise. “What we are seeing is patients in their 20s and 30s and 40s,” Marna Borgstrom, CEO of Yale New Haven Health, recently told NBC News in Connecticut.
In Chicago, the city’s public health commissioner, Dr. Allison Arwady, warned that younger adults are pushing the Covid-19 metrics to a level not seen since October. “Even if there are more cases in young people, we still are seeing that translate into an increase in hospitalizations,” Arwady said. “I am concerned, and I hope everybody is concerned when they look at this data.”
But nowhere is the spread of Covid-19 among nongeriatrics more pronounced than in Michigan, which right now leads the nation in hospitalizations among younger, unvaccinated people, according to the latest CDC figures. Why Michigan? It’s not just because the state is grappling with the spread of highly infectious Covid-19 variants that’s second only to Florida.
“The surge in cases Michigan is experiencing is a combination factors: variants, outbreaks among schools/sporting teams and a high case rate among 10-19 year olds and now increasing rates among all age groups through 59, and Covid-fatigue,” Michigan health department spokeswoman Lynn Sutfin told local media on Monday.
In an interview last week with NBC News, Michigan public health expert Marianne Udow-Phillips said the surge in new Covid-19 cases “is directly related to the return of youth sports.” “It’s not happening on the field,” said Udow-Phillips, who heads the Center for Health Research Transformation at the University of Michigan. “It’s happening in transit and afterward, when people are getting together and eating and not wearing masks. It’s happening at parties and where people are socializing.”
While Michigan public health experts have been urging Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to keep the mask mandate and other restrictions in place, an advocacy group for student athletes and their parents called “Let Them Play” has sued the director of the state Health and Human Services Department, Elizabeth Hertel, over a new pandemic order that requires rapid testing for Covid-19 for all youth athletes ages of 13 to 19.
“It seems like there are a lot of people in Michigan who just want to fight Whitmer and don’t want to follow the protocols,” Robert Bensley, a professor of public health at Western Michigan University, told The Detroit Free Press. “They think it isn’t real; it’s a hoax. They won’t get vaccinated and they could get Covid, and they might be transmitting a variant that could be deadly.”
Michigan has seen some of the fiercest resistance to pandemic restrictions, and Whitmer, a Democrat, wound up being the target of what authorities have described as a right-wing kidnapping plot.
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Nearly 19.5 percent of Michigan residents have been fully vaccinated, according to Becker’s Hospital Review.
I’m in the mood to burn some bridges. I’ve burned more than just bridges. burning bridges is one of my favorite hobbies.
Fun fact: you’re supposed to learn from your mistakes Lay next to me in the dark and let’s turn off the world. People put effort into the things they want to put effort into. Trapped in this battle between the past and the future. Every once in a while you have to take a hard look at your life and rid yourself of everything that makes you unhappy. I’ve done that my whole life and lost a lot of people but only cause I truly respect myself. Sometimes all we need is for someone to lie down next to us and look at the sky. What I don’t understand is why you don’t understand. Read that again.
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Infection rate of Americans is .0018% …Infection rate of illegal immigrants is 9%.
Why are our kids rotting in front of a computer & going through depression.
While the illegals get in person teaching? Better yet… Why do libs HATE our country?
Aubrey Huff on Twitter: “The civil war is coming. Vaxxers Vs. Anti-vaxxers. Anti-vaxxers trust their immune system, jacked in the gym. Vaxxers can be seen sitting on their couch eating a free @krispykreme donut…. with high cholesterol. I know who wins.” / Twitter