On Dec. 14., 2020, a nurse in New York City became the first person in the U.S. to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. This week, the country crossed another important milestone: More than 200 million Americans are now fully inoculated. Today, a year into the vaccine campaign, I’ll take a look at how it’s going.
The U.S. made significant strides in 2021, even as it dealt with misinformation, deep-rooted skepticism and powerful new variants. Overall, about 60 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. Among people 65 and older, the most vulnerable population, that figure is more than 87 percent.
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“Those are really good things,” my colleague Danielle Ivory, an investigative reporter for The Times who has tracked the vaccine rollout, said. “Remember that last year around this time, when the vaccine first became available, there was such a small supply that only a small number of people in the country were eligible.”
These days, providers are administering about 1.92 million doses per day on average, including booster shots. The daily rate had been steadily climbing since the government widened eligibility, and it has jumped since Thanksgiving, when the Omicron variant was discovered.
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But the pace of vaccinations varies wildly across the country, and there are a number of counties, many in the South and West, where less than 30 percent of the population is fully inoculated. The U.S. also lags behind 50 other countries, many of which have inoculated over 80 percent of their populations.
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There are lots of reasons people are not getting shots. Surveys indicate that some are adamant in their refusal of the vaccines, while others are open to immunization but have been putting it off, or want to wait and see before making a decision.
The first group tends to be disproportionately white, rural, evangelical Christian and politically conservative. The second group tends to be more diverse, including many younger people, Black and Latino Americans, and Democrats. Health officials have made progress in inoculating that group, but surveys suggest that it accounts for less than half of all unvaccinated adults in the U.S.
As the country comes to terms with the size of the anti-vaccine population, the goal posts are also moving. At the start of the pandemic, experts estimated that to reach the threshold of herd immunity, 60 to 70 percent of the population would need to be fully vaccinated. But with stronger variants emerging, experts now put that number at 90 percent or higher.
Will the U.S. ever get there? A number of factors will determine the country’s success, including the pace of new vaccinations and how many people are granted immunity based on an infection.
The projection below, based on the current rate of newly vaccinated people, provides a rough indication of when the virus’s spread could begin to stall.
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Many epidemiologists aren’t sure that achieving such a high rate is possible.
“Unfortunately, I think herd immunity is a pretty elusive goal,” Danielle said. “So, short of that, as new variants emerge, policymakers may need to think beyond vaccination and consider other ways of trying to mitigate the virus.”
Omicron is also a wild card. If new variants lower the effectiveness of vaccines, boosters may be necessary to control the pandemic. The U.S. is averaging over 120,000 cases per day, with more than 55,000 patients hospitalized nationwide as we head into the colder months, when transmission is supercharged.
Exemption skepticism: A new survey found that about 60 percent of Americans were critical of religious exemptions to Covid vaccines.