Premature

Tomorrow, Wednesday June 30th, the state of Washington will be ending most COVID-19 restrictions.

They currently have 414,249 confirmed cases, but the unconfirmed cases probably bring that up to over 450,000. The death rate is holding pretty steady.

I am sure the reason they are deciding to "open" (besides pressure from people who resent any and all restrictions) is that they appear to be pretty close to 70% on vaccinations.
 
https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/COVID19/DataDashboard

Oregon still needs just over 19000 people to reach 70% vaccinated. I don't deny that is significant, but we are still also reporting new cases every day, and there are still some deaths.

https://www.oregon.gov/oha/erd/pages/covid-19-news.aspx

As of June 26th, I would have said the death rate looked like it was just over 1% as well, but with two days with no deaths, maybe that is turning a corner. I would take that.

There are still some things worrying me.

I am not sure that 70% is the right goal. I have seen 80% as representing something closer to herd immunity anyway. I wonder what percentage of people had received the MMR vaccine when they were having those measles outbreaks.

Also, I believe the percentage numbers they are using are based on ages. If we get 70% of adults and teens vaccinated, that's great. With no children under 12 being vaccinated, that is also not 70% of the population. 

Children can get the virus. They can die from it. 

Will somebody please think of the children?

Here are other people I think about: the immune-compromised.

Some of them can't get the vaccine, or they can get it but because of things that their body does, or things that medications they take do, they are not only vulnerable to the virus, but the virus may be more harmful to them. Frankly, it has been harmful enough to people without compromised immune systems.

I also worry that hitting the 70% mark will see a slacking off of efforts. 

We know that there are people who oppose getting the vaccine. They are going to be some of the number in that 30%, but there are also people who are not receiving regular health care, people who need a little bit of reassurance -- especially pertaining to their specific health issues -- and people who may have cost concerns or transportation issues.

I saw some Twitter chat about how easy it was to get the vaccine; even if for some reason it wasn't easy in your state all you needed to do was drive to another state. It takes a stunning amount of ignorance to think that. 

Not everyone has access to cars or other transportation. Some states are also quite large. If you are in the middle of Texas or Alaska, or lots of states, going into the next state is no easy issue.

Are we going to keep seeking out those people? Will we bring the vaccine to them?

That doesn't even get into the Delta variant. Beyond that, the more people who contract the disease, the more potential there is for other variants that may be more deadly or more vaccine resistant or more highly transmissible.

Donating 500 million vaccine doses is nice, but the population of the world is 7.9 billion. We have a long way to go to take care of everyone, and we do need to take care of everyone.

"We must love one another or die."

Auden ended up hating that line, thinking it was cheesy and trashy. It is also true.

Can we love each other before it's too late?

More on that tomorrow.