As Texas watches COVID cases fall despite having scrapped all mandatory restrictions on businesses, masks and movement, a phenomenon that has befuddled Dr. Anthony Fauci, Johns Hopkins reports that roughly half of the new cases being reported in the US are coming from just 5 states, almost all of them controlled by Democrats: New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Together, these states accounted for 44% of the nation’s new COVID infections, or nearly 197,500 new cases over 7 days. Total US infections during the same period was 452,000. In total, the US reported just under 63K total cases over the last 24 hours, while deaths retreated to just 353.
Some warned that high levels of so-called “variants” – mutated COVID strains believed to be more infectious – have reportedly been driving infection rates among the young. But although cases have accelerated, deaths have continued to fall, a byproduct of the fact that most senior citizens, who are the most vulnerable to the virus, have already been vaccinated. In response, some have demanded that the federal government ship more vaccines to the troubled states.
The spike in cases has been especially pronounced in Michigan, where the seven-day average of daily new infections reached 6,719 cases Sunday — more than double what it was two weeks earlier. Only New York reported higher case numbers. And California and Texas, which have vastly larger populations than Michigan, are reporting less than half its number of daily infections.
In New York City, vaccination appointments are still hard to come by. Bill de Blasio has publicly harangued the federal government about the need for a bigger vaccine allotment almost daily. – READ MORE
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