NC COVID expert: As cases rise, the US is throwing the unvaccinated a lifeline. Take it.

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What’s fueling the delta variant fire

The writer is an infectious disease specialist at UNC Health and a leading expert on coronavirus in NC.

The downward trends in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations that encouraged loosening of mask wearing and indoor capacity limits stalled Over the past three weeks and are now pitching upward.

Daily new diagnoses of COVID-19 in the U.S., which dipped below 5,000 in June, are now over 35,000 and climbing. COVID-19 hospitalizations are also steeply rising, especially in parts of the South. Deaths from the infection are heading upward.

Regardless of their rationales, unvaccinated people serve as kindling for the delta fire.

According to the CDC, 99% of the 15,000-20,000 people hospitalized each week with COVID-19 infections are unvaccinated. Other data show vaccination protects against COVID-19 infection, even the delta variant. And when breakthrough infections do occur, research finds full vaccination likely reduces the amount and duration of viral shedding, protecting others from infection.

Therefore, as delta squeezes out other circulating variants, the unvaccinated are the people who will become infected, get sick, die, and infect others, including children too young to get the shots and individuals with immune systems compromised in ways that keep them from responding to the vaccines.

To win the race against this variant and stop the coming chain of illness, death and a return to strict mitigation measures, the unvaccinated will have to put aside their unhealthy skepticism and check their fears and biases.

They will need to acknowledge if not the science, then the testimonies and experiences of more than 180 million people in the U.S. alone who have been vaccinated — safely and effectively.

They will have to understand that it is not the vaccines that hurt and kill people, but they, the unvaccinated, who do.

If they don’t accept the lifeline that we in this country are privileged to have to pull us forward and keep from returning to the darkest time of this pandemic, then the only direction we will go is backward.

Dr. David Alain Wohl, Carrboro

NC bill mimics Trump’s order

Republican Senate leader Phil Berger intends to take up House Bill 324 because “we don’t want to indoctrinate folks.” I’d find this amusing if it weren’t so dangerous.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines indoctrination as, “the process of repeating an idea or belief to someone until they accept it without criticism or question.” This is an apt description of how House Bill 324 was crafted by N.C. House Republicans.

The list of concepts that public schools are not to promote are nearly verbatim quotations from President Trump’s Executive Order 13950 of September 2020. In comparing the N.C. bill with Trump’s order I found seven incidents where the language is nearly identical.

An example: Trump’s order banned teaching of “divisive concepts,” including that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.” HB 324 says public schools shall not promote that “an individual, solely by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

Trump’s ill-conceived order prompted immediate legal challenges, an injunction by a U.S. District Court, and a repeal of the order by President Biden the day he was inaugurated.

Nevertheless, Republicans across the U.S. are still copying these concepts into legislation in places like Louisiana (April), Oklahoma (May), and Tennessee (June).

Perhaps N.C. Republican lawmakers believe that if they just repeat them one more time, folks will accept their beliefs without criticism or question. No thanks, Sen. Berger. After all, “we don’t want to indoctrinate folks.”

Susan Mazzara, Cary