We Can’t Hide in Our Bubble of Immunity Forever
Updated at 9:00 a.m. ET on May 17, 2021.
The United States is rapidly encasing itself in a bubble of immunity. Heading into a quite possibly wonderful summer, more than half of adults are at least partly vaccinated against COVID-19, and their masks are coming off. Some will be rewarded with a million-dollar prize. The rest can wander into any CVS when they feel so moved. Soon that luxury will extend to tweens.
By July 4, according to President Joe Biden, the bubble will be near completion. As Americans celebrate their independence, though, all indications suggest that the coronavirus pandemic will be raging. Only about 3 percent of adults are vaccinated in India, where a dangerous variant is spreading and tens of thousands of people are lost every day (based on very rough estimates from overloaded crematoria). In parts of Africa, almost no one is protected. The virus is tearing across South America. The contrast with the U.S. could not be starker. And we are doing very little about it.
This has always been a tale of two pandemics: One for the rich people who can work anywhere in February, Siddhartha Mukherjee how India, by contrast, could have spent so little money (and done relatively little locking down), and yet seemed, at that point, to have escaped the worst of COVID-19. Was it something to do with the climate? Genetics, lifestyle, hygiene, immune-system differences?
