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Should the Unvaxxed and Unmasked be Denied Medical Care?
It’s only September, and in the United States, COVID has already done more damage this year than it did in all of 2020. It was in June that COVID became deadlier than it was all of last year. Hospitals are overwhelmed, the country is averaging more than 1,000 deaths a day, and an overwhelming number of people are at their wit’s end with this pandemic. An entire year-and-a-half has not caused an improvement with hospitals being overwhelmed, lives being lost, and Americans being diagnosed with COVID. Thanks to the variant known as Delta, COVID has become more transmissible and resistant to the vaccines currently available. That’s staggering considering we’ve collectively had a year-and-a-half to learn the importance of masks and social distancing, and the first vaccines became available in the United States back in December. As of now, only a little over half of the population is fully vaccinated.
At the end of 2020, there were more than 20 million COVID cases in the United States and approximately 375,000 deaths. There is now almost double those cases, and the death toll has creeped up to 646,000 deaths, and winter has not come back around yet. There has been no progression in the fight to halt the spread of COVID as a nation. As of September 2, the 7-day average of deaths is 1,521 people.