Infectious disease experts, like World Health Organization epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove and National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, are dismayed at the world's approach to the COVID-19 pandemic at the moment, The Washington Post reports.

Coronavirus infections are rising swiftly in the United States and elsewhere, and deaths and hospitalizations are ticking back up, as well, largely due to stalled vaccination drives and the growing presence of the so-called delta variant, which is more transmissible. "We're getting further away from the end than we should be," Van Kerkhove told the Post. "We're in a bad place right now globally."

Despite all that, people — and governments — in several parts of the world are not always adhering to the same precautions as they did earlier in the pandemic. "It's like we've been to this movie several times in the last year and a half, and it doesn't end well," Collins told the Post. "Somehow, we're running the tape again. It's all predictable." Read more at The Washington Post.

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