How Did It Come to This?
The CDC’s color-coded coronavirus case map, if you can find it, is easy enough to read. It’s a county-by-county snapshot of viral transmission—the agency’s new fallback for advising fully vaccinated people on whether they need to don a mask indoors. The parts painted in those scary shades of orange or red are areas of substantial or high transmission, respectively; they’re the places where you should be shielding your face indoors, regardless of how shot-fortified your immune system is. According to the agency, not everyone has to mask up again, so the map is, in theory, something inoculated Americans could check like a weather forecast to decide their face’s fate. Use the map, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky advised in a press briefing this week. It’s updated daily.
Today, the CDC is expected to publish data, leaked last night and , hinting at the increased dangers of the Delta variant—a version of the coronavirus that can accumulate in in the airways when it does. Delta is clearly a far more formidable foe than its predecessors, which makes a map like this seem an even more necessary tool.
