The South could still become a summertime Covid-19 hot spot — Vox
“But experts are increasingly worried that, in the southern half of the country, the return to normalcy could be a mirage and that summer could bring another wave of the virus in parts of the country. “I’m definitely worried,” Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at George Mason University, told me.
The concern isn’t about another nationwide surge, but potential state or local spikes. That’s because southern states, including much of the Sun Belt and especially the Deep South, face three distinct disadvantages this summer that other parts of the country don’t.”
“1) Lower vaccination rates: As the US has pushed ahead in its vaccination campaign, a significant gap between southern states and others
has developed. In the Northeast, at least 50 percent of people in each state have received at least one dose of the vaccine, with a few states surpassing 60 percent. In Arizona and Texas, less than 45 percent of people have. In the Deep South, most states haven’t surpassed 40 percent rates — and Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi are below 35 percent. That leaves many unvaccinated people who remain vulnerable to the coronavirus.
2) Higher temperatures: While the summer brings outdoor activities for northern parts of the US, it can do the opposite for southern states. As the heat climbs past the 90s and into the 100s, people tend to go into air-conditioned or at least closed-off indoor areas. That’s bad news for the spread of Covid-19, since the virus has a much easier time spreading in indoor, poorly ventilated spaces. This seemed to lead to more spread in the Sun Belt last summer.
“I don’t think people understand how hard it is to be outside in the summer here,” Popescu, who lives in Arizona, said. “Even late at night, it’s like 100 degrees in the summer. So it’s not easy to tell people to go outside. And it’s really hard for businesses, especially restaurants and bars, to keep the doors open, the windows open — it’s like opening the oven door when you’re baking cookies, you get that blast of heat.”
3) Lower adherence to precautions: The first two problems on this list could be mitigated with adherence to Covid-19-related precautions, such as social distancing and masking. But due to the political polarization of such measures, Republican-dominated southern states tend to have lower rates of masking and social distancing than much of the US, based on
Carnegie Mellon University’s COVIDcast.”
Plus the rollback of mask mandates.
Very few people of all ages are wearing masks indoors, social distancing is out the window and vaccination is a bad word.
JMO
