YOUR TURN: COVID conundrum our fault, not Biden's
Last year in July, Americans planned to celebrate victory over COVID. President Biden planned a July Fourth celebration at the White House but this turned out to be premature. The delta variant arrived to mess things up.
We were seeing 259 deaths per day at that time but by the end of September, daily deaths had exceeded 2,000 due to the delta variant. This was not President Biden's fault, as his administration pleaded with Americans to get vaccinated.
The delta variant continued to explode but as we approached Thanksgiving, things seemed to settle down. We saw studies that revealed waning immunity to COVID after six months of receiving the vaccine. President Biden and his administration advised us to get the booster shot.
We did not comply very well in getting the vaccine and then in getting the booster shot. Around Thanksgiving, the omicron variant arrived on the scene and we learned that it was extremely transmissible. In subsequent weeks, the variant has spread like wildfire and now many are blaming Biden because of testing shortfalls.
I maintain that we are to blame for this fiasco. Despite having plenty of mRNA vaccines throughout America, we did not respond appropriately. Only about 63% of us have received the two doses of the vaccine. Many infectious diseases specialists feel that "full vaccination" requires the booster shot as well. As of today, only about 30% of vaccinated Americans have received the booster shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so that leaves three-quarters of us vulnerable to the spread of the omicron variant. We now are seeing on a daily basis 879,000 new cases, 157,000 hospitalizations and over 1,700 deaths.
This should not have happened. Many of us refused to get vaccinated and even those who got vaccinated have not received their booster shot. We have argued about vaccine mandates throughout society (health care workers, public transportation, education facilities, work environments, etc.) and we received no support from the Supreme Court in its most recent decision.
We don't abide by mask mandates and we ignore public health measures to mitigate the spread of COVID, such as indoor masking, social distancing and avoiding indoor gatherings. This was readily apparent during the holiday celebrations. We have not done a good job of maintaining quarantine measures, including isolating and tracing.
We were given effective vaccines and other public heath soft tools to mitigate the spread. We, the public, have failed in our individual responsibilities to deal with this pandemic. Indeed, it's not Biden. It's us!
Anton Yereniuk lives in Hyannis Port.
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: too many unvaccinated and unboosted americans keeps virus spreading
