COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   330,007 (⬆︎ .18%)
New Deaths:      6,168 (⬆︎ .15%)

USA

New Cases:   4,169 (⬆︎ .01%)
New Deaths:       38 (⬆︎ .01%)

Yesterday, July 4th, 2021

0 Vaccinated people

and

6,168 Un-Vaccinated people

were killed by COVID-19

182.4 million vaccinated

Including more than 157.3 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated.

In the last week, an average of 1.04 million doses per day were administered,

a 25% increase over the week before.

And now - finally - Republican governors are getting on board, urging their residents to get vaxxed.

To be fair, some of these guys haven't been following the standard GOP bullshit, even though they've also not exactly been overly vocal in pushing for the appropriate protocols like masks and distance and closings, etc. But now they're out there talking like they shoulda been talking 16 months ago. 16 fucking months.

But also too - these 3 GOP Governors in particular have been among the reasonable ones who, while not exactly qualifying for any Profiles In Courage laurels, at least haven't been leading-by-the-stoopid.

WaPo:

GOP governors implored their residents on Sunday to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, as polling shows that vaccine hesitancy has been driven by Republicans and as the virus’s new, more contagious delta variant has caused recent upticks in covid-19 cases in areas with low vaccination rates.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) on Sunday expressed concern about possible “trouble” ahead for Arkansans if the state did not accelerate its vaccination rate. In Arkansas, about 53 percent of adults have at least one dose of the vaccine, compared with about two-thirds of adults nationally. The state has seen a recent spike in covid cases and hospitalizations, driven mostly by the delta variant.

“The solution is the vaccinations,” Hutchinson said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that while many of the state’s senior citizens have gotten vaccinated, the delta variant was now hitting Arkansas’ younger, unvaccinated adults. “It is a great concern.”

Hutchinson avoided saying whether he would reimpose mask mandates if the state’s numbers did not improve and also stopped short of saying Arkansas was about to experience a third wave of covid cases and deaths.

However, he did emphasize that the state would continue to make vaccines accessible — including, for example, offering free shots at the state’s July Fourth “Pops on the River” celebration on Sunday.

“We are in a race,” Hutchinson said. “And if we stopped right here, and we didn’t get a greater percent of our population vaccinated, then we’re going to have trouble in the next school year and over the winter. So, we want to get ahead of that curve. Working very hard to do that.”

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll showed 74 percent of people who haven’t been vaccinated say they probably or definitely won’t get vaccinated — and that the divide fell sharply along party lines. According to the survey, 86 percent of Democrats have received at least one vaccine shot compared with 45 percent of Republicans. Only 6 percent of Democrats said they are not likely to get vaccinated, compared with 47 percent of Republicans, including 38 percent of Republicans overall who said they definitely will not get the vaccine.

Hutchinson alluded to some of that partisan divide Sunday when asked about why it had been so difficult to increase Arkansas’ vaccination rate.

“Well, in a rural state, in a conservative state, there is hesitancy. And you’re trying to overcome that,” Hutchinson said. “We got the early vaccinations out because people were anxious. They were in a very vulnerable population. Our cases went down dramatically. And that slowed the vaccination rate. The urgency diminished. And now it’s picking up again.”

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) had blunter words Sunday when asked about vaccine hesitancy, particularly among young people, despite the incentives states are offering that include lottery prizes and college scholarships.

“The red states probably have a lot of people that are very, very conservative in their thinking and they think, ‘Well, I don’t have to do that.’ But they’re not thinking right,” Justice said on ABC’s “This Week.” The governor has aggressively urged his residents to get vaccinated for months, and West Virginia has been offering everything from college scholarships to free hunting and fishing licenses as incentives.

Despite that, only 52 percent of adults in West Virginia have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine. Justice expressed frustration with the stalled efforts, particularly with getting young people “across the finish line.”

“When it really boils right down to it, they’re in a lottery to themselves,” he said. “We have a lottery that says if you’re vaccinated we’re going to give you stuff. Well, you’ve got another lottery for them, and it’s a death lottery.”

Justice added that he thought the only thing that would compel some holdouts to get vaccinated would be the deaths of friends and family.

“What would put them over the edge is an awful lot of people dying,” he said. “The only way it’s really going to happen is a catastrophe that none of us want. We just have to keep trying.”

On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Gov. Spencer Cox (R-Utah) explained that his state’s lower vaccination rate was partly the result of having the country’s youngest population, adding that adults in Utah are getting vaccinated at the same rate as rest of nation. He called the vaccination gap among Republicans “troubling” and said “hopefully reason will rule.”

"...hopefully reason will rule." ? With Republicans?

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