‘Not Out of the Woods’: C.D.C. Issues Warning to
the Unvaccinated
The renewed sense of urgency was aimed at millions of
people who have not yet been vaccinated and therefore are most likely to be
infected.
Michael D.
ShearJonathan WeismanSheryl Gay Stolberg
By Michael
D. Shear, Jonathan Weisman and Sheryl Gay Stolberg
July 22,
2021
WASHINGTON
— The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on
Thursday that the United States was “not out of the woods yet” on the pandemic
and was once again at a “pivotal point” as the highly infectious Delta variant
ripped through unvaccinated communities.
Just weeks
after President Biden threw a Fourth of July party on the South Lawn of the
White House to declare independence from the virus, the director, Dr. Rochelle
P. Walensky, called the now dominant variant “one of the most infectious
respiratory viruses” known to scientists.
The renewed
sense of urgency inside the administration was aimed at tens of millions of
people who have not yet been vaccinated and therefore are most likely to be
infected and become sick. Her grim message came at a time of growing anxiety
and confusion, especially among parents of young children who are still not
eligible to take the shot. And it underscored how quickly the pandemic’s latest
surge had unsettled Americans who had begun to believe the worst was over,
sending politicians and public health officials scrambling to recalibrate their
responses.
“This is
like the moment in the horror movie when you think the horror is over and the
credits are about to roll,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of
Maryland. “And it all starts back up again.”
The choice
by millions to reject the vaccine has had the consequences that public health
officials predicted: The number of new cases in the country has shot up almost
250 percent since the beginning of the month, with an average of more than
41,000 infections being diagnosed each day during the past week — up from
12,000.
The disease
caused by the virus is claiming about 250 lives each day — far fewer than
during the peaks last year, but still 42 percent higher than two weeks ago.
More than 97 percent of those hospitalized are unvaccinated, Dr. Walensky said
last week.
The public
health crisis is particularly acute in parts of the country where vaccination
rates are the lowest. In Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, the
number of daily new cases is up more than 200 percent in the past two weeks,
driving new hospitalizations and deaths almost exclusively among the
unvaccinated. Intensive care units are filled or filling in southern Missouri
and northern Arkansas.
The
turnabout is forcing both political parties in Washington to grapple — so far
in halting and tentative ways — with questions about what tone they should
strike, what guidance they should provide and what changes they need to make to
confront the latest iteration of the worst public health crisis in a century.
The White
House announced new grants on Thursday to local health offices for vaccines and
increased testing in rural communities, even as administration officials said
they were “making continued progress in our fight against the virus” and
insisted that there was no need to reconsider their basic strategy. Although
reports of so-called breakthrough infections in vaccinated people are growing,
they remain relatively uncommon, and those that cause severe illness,
hospitalization or death are especially rare.
But the
surge in infections and hospitalizations in some parts of the country, even if
limited mostly to people who have chosen not to be vaccinated, has presented
Mr. Biden with an evolving challenge that could threaten the economic recovery
and his own political standing.
The stock
market is wobbly. His administration is under new pressure to reimpose mask
mandates, as Los Angeles County did this week. And the president’s top aides
are on the defensive about their strategy to get the pandemic back in check.
“It’s
frustrating,” Mr. Biden acknowledged Wednesday night during a town hall event
on CNN.
The rise of
the variant may also be changing the equation for some Republicans, who are seeing
many of their own voters hospitalized — or worse. Representative Steve Scalise
of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, received his first shot on Sunday,
noting “another spike” in the pandemic. The Fox News host Sean Hannity declared
on his show, “I believe in the science of vaccinations.”
On Capitol
Hill on Thursday, House Republican leaders and doctors in their caucus only
grudgingly signaled their support for vaccinations, though even that support
was mixed.
“If you are
at risk, you should be getting this vaccine,” said Representative Andy Harris
of Maryland, a physician, adding, “We urge all Americans to talk to their
doctors about the risks of Covid, talk to their doctors about the benefits of
getting vaccinated and then come to a decision.”
Their news
conference was advertised as an attempt to “discuss the need for individuals to
get vaccinated.” But it was dominated by efforts to promote an unproven theory
that the Chinese released a virulent, human-made virus on the world and
accusations that Democrats covered it up.
The
vaccines are working to keep those who have received shots out of serious
danger, but charts tracking the pandemic that had been declining for months —
heralded by Mr. Biden as proof that his approach was working — are heading
sharply upward.
The rapid
sweep of the new variant has people questioning whether they need to retreat
again from restaurants, movie theaters, bars, sporting events and their
offices. What seemed like clear — and mostly positive — choices only days ago
now seem muddy.
White House
officials deflected questions on Thursday about whether people who were
vaccinated should begin wearing masks indoors again, as health officials in Los
Angeles County ordered days ago. Jeffrey D. Zients, the coronavirus coordinator
for the White House, said only that current C.D.C. guidance did not require it.
“It’s up to
each and every single American to do their own part,” he said. “We know
everyone’s vaccination journey is different. We are ready to get more Americans
vaccinated whenever, wherever they’re ready.”
Amid the
concern, one thing is clear: The variant has again upended hopes for an end to
the pandemic and raised a new fear on the horizon — that a much-anticipated
return to work and school could be disrupted after most of the country has
spent nearly 18 months in stay-at-home seclusion.
“I am
worried about the fall,” said Representative Lauren Underwood, Democrat of
Illinois and a registered nurse. “August is going to be rough. Back to school
is going to be rough. We’re going to see more illness and more death.”
Andy
Slavitt, a public health expert who recently left the Biden White House’s
coronavirus response team, said the administration would not consider mandating
vaccinations on the military or federal work force until the Food and Drug
Administration gave permanent approval to the coronavirus vaccines, which are
now under emergency use authorization.
But, he
said, final approval to the Pfizer vaccine is “within weeks to a short number
of months.” Once that happens, he said, “everything should be on the table, and
I can tell you that’s the attitude inside the White House.”
Public
school systems could also mandate vaccination at that point, just as they
mandate vaccines for polio, measles, mumps and rubella — with some exceptions
for religious or health reasons. That would quickly drive up vaccination rates.
Beyond
mandates, there are few obvious policy changes, since Congress has already
showered the health authorities with funding for vaccination campaigns and made
vaccines widely available. Representative Ami Bera, Democrat of California, who
is a physician, suggested the Biden administration mount a public advertising
campaign along the lines of smoking cessation campaigns that once featured a
dying man smoking through his tracheotomy.
“Let’s have
an ad with a 20-year-old guy saying: ‘I didn’t take it seriously. I got it and
I killed my grandmother,’” he said.
“You don’t
need to shut things down,” said Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, a doctor.
“Look, as far as I know, not one child under the age of 18 has died from Covid,
unless they had some type of a serious health condition as well.”
Deaths in
American children are exceedingly low — 346 as of July 15 — but some of them
most likely did not have underlying health conditions.
So far,
Republicans have also resisted raising alarm bells in conservative populations.
The Kaiser Family Foundation reported at the end of June that 86 percent of
Democrats had at least one shot, compared with 52 percent of Republicans.
Policymakers
feel hamstrung, in large part because once Americans resume life without masks
and other restrictions, it will be difficult to go back. Vaccine and mask
mandates would almost certainly prompt a fierce backlash, but they could also
save lives.
“We’ve all
got this psychology, well it’s over, but intellectually we know it ain’t over,”
said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader. He asked,
“How do we get a society that had a tremendous sense of being locked up in a
mask, then got free, to go back?”
Michael D.
Shear is a veteran White House correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner
who was a member of team that won the Public Service Medal for Covid coverage
in 2020. He is the co-author of “Border Wars: Inside Trump's Assault on
Immigration.” @shearm
Jonathan
Weisman is a congressional correspondent, veteran Washington journalist and
author of the novel “No. 4 Imperial Lane” and the nonfiction book
“(((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump.” His career in
journalism stretches back 30 years. @jonathanweisman
Sheryl Gay
Stolberg is a Washington Correspondent covering health policy. In more than two
decades at The Times, she has also covered the White House, Congress and
national politics. Previously, at The Los Angeles Times, she shared in two
Pulitzer Prizes won by that newspaper’s Metro staff. @SherylNYT
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