The US has passed the peak of the delta wave and the number of infections and deaths has been falling significantly for a few days. Instead of up to 160,000 daily infections there are currently around 76,000, instead of 2000 people die every day around 1,500.
The fact that the delta wave could rage so violently in the USA has to do with politics. In short, the more conservative an area, the higher the proportion of Republican voters, the greater the skepticism there about vaccinating and wearing masks, the lower the vaccination rate and the higher the number of new infections and deaths. The Delta Wave was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”. And whether a person is unvaccinated or not, in the USA depends very much on their party-political ties.
The problem is not just that Republicans, especially the hard core of Donald Trump’s supporters, are less likely to want to be vaccinated than Democrats. But also that Republican governors deliberately thwart President Joe Biden’s epidemic control measures. In some Republican states, they have banned public institutions or private employers from asking for proof of vaccination or imposing compulsory vaccinations – a direct contradiction of the line of the US federal government. School districts were banned from making mask compulsory in class. The fact that right-wing media such as Fox News constantly asserts that the risk of infection and transmission is just as great for vaccinated people as for unvaccinated people, and that mask and vaccination mandates limit the freedom of Americans, also helps to lower the vaccination quota in the conservative part of the population.
Another example of how a populist politician lets the corona situation escalate again and again is a man for whom Donald Trump was very sympathetic: Boris Johnson. Scientists, doctors, unions, mayors – the British prime minister had been warned from all sides against lifting almost all corona restrictions in the country on July 19. But “Freedom Day” came, the masks fell. Three months later, the UK has almost 50,000 new infections per day, one of the highest infection rates in the world and as many deaths as last March.
The increase is due to Johnson’s opening-up policy, but there is probably another reason. Almost 79 percent of the population aged twelve and over is fully vaccinated, but because the vaccination campaign in Great Britain started early, many had the second injection more than six months ago. A booster vaccination campaign has now been hastily launched. On Wednesday, the British Minister of Health reiterated that the government did not want to return to the corona requirements. They will only do this when the pressure on the NHS becomes “unbearable”.