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It’s becoming more and more apparent that people have two choices: Get vaccinated and live, or risk getting COVID – and possibly dying.
In Maryland, everyone who died of COVID-19 in June was unvaccinated, the governor’s office said earlier this month. Likewise, 95% of new COVID cases in the state were in unvaccinated people, and 93% of new COVID hospitalizations were in the unvaxxed.
Louisiana has similar statistics, with 97% of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the state among those not fully vaccinated, Gov. John Bel Edwards said Friday. The delta variant is the dominant strain in the state, and just 46% of adults are vaccinated.
“We only have two choices,” infectious disease specialist Dr. Catherine O’Neal said during a state COVID-19 press briefing Friday, according to ABC News. “We are either going to get vaccinated and end the pandemic, or we are going to accept death, a lot of it, this surge and another surge and possibly another variant.”
From Alabama to Los Angeles County, and across the U.S., the unvaccinated are the ones most stricken. It’s even true in New York, where 64% of the population is fully vaccinated, ABC News said, with 98% of the smaller number of deaths were among those without all shots.
“This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr. Rochelle Walensky Friday at a White House Covid-19 briefing, according to CNN.
An ABC News report Monday stacked up the stark stats to show that overwhelmingly, between 96% and 100% of coronavirus deaths were among the unvaccinated in Alabama, Maryland, Louisiana and New York city. Nationwide, “98, 99-plus percent of people that are being hospitalized and dying with COVID have not been vaccinated,” former White House COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt said last month.
There is no scientific reason to skip the vaccine, health experts emphasize. Millions of people have received them safely, and are protected, as the CDC notes on its website.
The need for vaccination is even more urgent given the delta variant, experts warned.
“The bottom line is we are dealing with a formidable opponent in the Delta variant,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday, according to CNN, and people who are not vaccinated face “extreme vulnerability.”