Your quality of life in the United States, in many ways, is often dictated by where you live, but the pandemic has made this true like never before.
Of all current COVID-19 hospitalizations in the US, eight states’ combined totals make up 51% of all patients, even though those states account for only 24% of the nation’s population.
Those states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada and Texas.
Or how about this astounding data point:
In the past week, Florida has had more COVID cases than all 30 states with the lowest case rates combined.
Let that one sink in for a moment.
Also, Florida and Texas alone have accounted for nearly 40% of new hospitalizations across the country.
Dallas county has run out of pediatric ICU beds. Mississippi has run out of all ICU beds altogether.
Of course, these are also states where mask mandates and vaccine requirements are not being implemented or have been made illegal by asinine governors. Masks are worn far less often, and vaccination rates in many of these states are low.
Americans in these highly infectious states admittedly have their freedom, but they are also importing ventilators from the federal government, airlifting children to hospitals with ICU capacity, and setting up mobile refrigerated morgues.
By contrast, I went to the grocery store earlier this week. Every single person inside that store was masked.
I picked up a slice of pizza for lunch yesterday. Every single person who wasn’t eating was masked.
I stopped for milk at 7-11 last night. Every single person in that shop was masked.
None of these locations are mandating masks. At least not yet. I simply live in a community where the vast majority of citizens care about one another, trust science, and support public health.
The results are easy to see.
Texas and Florida’s positivity rates are currently 20%.
Oklahoma and Mississippi’s positivity rates are above 50%.
Connecticut’s positivity rate is less than 3%.
In fact, every New England state plus New York has a positivity rate under 5%.
This doesn’t mean that my community is perfect. There are still people refusing to get vaccinated despite the risks to themselves and others.
Their reasons are varied.
They may think that they’re healthy enough to fight off the infection, even though healthy, unvaccinated people are getting hospitalized and dying because of the Delta variant every day. Also, even if you fight off the infection, you can still infect others while doing so.
Hubris, it turns out, can kill.
Or they don’t think they need a vaccination because our state’s positivity rates are so low, which is in large part because our vaccination rates are so high. These are essentially freeloaders, enjoying the benefits of a vaccinated community while refusing to become vaccinated themselves.
But 3% positivity isn’t 0% positivity. There is still a chance of infection, especially if they are unvaccinated.
Rolling the dice, it turns out, can also kill.
Or maybe they don’t believe in vaccines, even though almost every single one of them has already received more than a dozen vaccines that have protected them from polio, small pox, the measles, the mumps, and many more diseases. Their parents did the right thing by protecting them years ago while contributing to the common good, but these people are far too smart, way too special, or simply too pristine to repeat that vaccination process again for themselves.
As Elysha Dicks has said, no one likes bringing their babies to the doctor to get vaccines. It would be great to rely on everyone else’s vaccination status to eradicate polio and small pox while avoiding the jab for yourself and your own child, but that’s not how decent human beings behave. It’s not ethically, morally, or even medically sound.
It makes you a sucky person. A sucky person who might actually contract polio or the small pox someday.
Still, these people are in the minority in my state and my region. Our infection rates are low because vaccination rates are high, and when the Delta variant caused our positivity rates to climb from less than one percent to 3 percent, most of us donned masks again, because we were advised to and because it made sense.
The quality of life in the United States has always been dictated by where you live. The quality of your child’s education is determined in great part by the neighborhood in which you live. The quality of the air you breathe is determined by the industry in your city. The quality of your medical care is determined in part by the hospitals in your region.
The pandemic has made this even more true by making some parts of our nation far safer than others, not because of economics or industry but simply because of human behavior.
It’s a damn tragedy.
