The delta variant of the coronavirus is beginning to spread in California, heralding how the battle for the pandemic will change as officials take action to protect the declining number of minorities who are still at risk because they are not vaccinated.
The spread of Delta variants may be twice that of traditional strains. But California and the rest of the United States are more resilient to COVID-19 than ever. California has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, and the United States has one of the highest per capita vaccination rates in the world.
The vaccines available in the United States are considered effective against Delta variants, just as they are for all known variants. But this still leaves tens of millions of unvaccinated people still potentially vulnerable.
"If you get the vaccine, it's nothing," Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, said of the Delta variant. "If you are not vaccinated, you will be instilled."
Officials expect that in the past 15 months, the COVID-19 epidemic will not have another fatal surge like the number of people who have hit the country three times in the past 15 months. On the contrary, the risk is greater that the Delta variant will take root in unimmunized communities that have not previously been infected with the coronavirus.
This is what future experts expect: Most people who have been vaccinated are well protected against the world’s worst epidemics in the last century, and those who have not been vaccinated are still at risk.