And I’m very proud of you. The last couple weeks have been quite the metric assload of suck with the Delta variant and the sad realization that for reasons I simply cannot fathom, not enough folks are getting vaccinated.

The Feds requring employees & contractors to be vaccinated, plus Google & Facebook openly requiring it as well should help a little – and hopefully spur other companies to follow suit if they haven’t already. My employer has already said it will be required for return to office, and any company travel/client visits. I’d love to see more high profile companies say out loud that they’re requiring it. And school systems and state university systems. And the military.

Everyone in my circle of friends is vaccinated and we’re all just gobsmacked that folks aren’t doing it. I know I was just slowly gutted as I watched the vaccination numbers just tank over time. I was SO hyped to get an appointment as soon as I could and I thought that would continue over the summer. My county is still only at 57.9%/63.9% fully/partially vaccinated. Our eligible population is 84.6% of our total. That’s over 200K people who haven’t even gotten a first shot yet – and it’s not for lack of supply.

I understand hesitancy, but it’s been out there long enough that we can see it’s safe, it’s helping keep vaccinated folks out of the hospital, and it’s not a bad thing. Yes, we’ll probably need boosters (Shep is in a booster trial), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work – it just needs a little more oomph with the damn Delta variant.

I just don’t know what we do at this point beyond saying “get your shot or lose your job” – and I hate that it has come to that, but we gotta get more folks vaccinated. If we were at a point where we had enough vaccinated people that we could protect the unvaccinated, that would be great, but instead, the unvaccinated + the Delta variant are just too much for just the vaccinated folks to overcome right now. Honestly, it hurts that my getting vaccinated doesn’t seem to have helped. (I’d do the exact same thing again in a split second, I just wanted it to matter, and it legit hurts that there aren’t enough people that want to help to make it matter.)

And the CDC needs to re-staff it’s comms department, like yesterday. I was reading that it had been gutted under the last admin (shocker) and that is partially why the messaging has been so bad. The idea that unvaccinated folks would be jealous of vaccinated folks being able to ditch their masks and would then go get vaccinated… *sigh* How no one could see, “Or unvaccinated folks just ditch masks and yell ‘HIPPO’ everywhere they go” is beyond me.

Anytime I hear “asking if I’ve gotten the shot is a violation of my rights” I know that’s not so subtle code for, “I haven’t gotten vaccinated.” I just don’t know how we get across that being unvaccinated is a danger to yourself and the community. But, we also couldn’t get that across for masking either, so I guess I shouldn’t be shocked.

But, we keep going and doing our best and masking up and helping folks with access problems get vaccinated and trying to convince anyone else we know who is unvaccinated to take the leap and get the shot. It’s gonna be hard, but we have to keep trying.

Have a safe weekend.