The Biden administration set a goal of injecting 100 million vaccine shots into arms in their first 100 days but over 200 million were ultimately administered during that time frame. And as of this week, over 300 million shots have been administered.
The administration has met or surpassed all of their goals up to this point, but there is one they no longer expect to meet.
White House officials say they won't reach their goal of vaccinating 70 percent of all adults by July 4th because young people just aren't as interested.
Jeffrey Zients, the head of the White House Covid-19 response team, was scheduled to announce that the administration has hit its 70 percent vaccination target among Americans ages 30 and older, and is poised to reach that threshold for those 27 and older by the Fourth of July. [...]
“The reality is, many younger Americans have felt like Covid-19 is not something that impacts them and have been less eager to get the shot,” he plans to say, according to advance remarks obtained by NBC News.
I don't know if anyone under the age of 27 is reading this, but if you are, get a shot! I promise it won't kill you but the coronavirus might kill you or someone close to you. The World Health Organization (WHO) says the deadly Delta variant is now the dominant strain of the virus and it's more lethal even to young people who think they are invincible.
The shot is free even if you don't have health insurance and I personally didn't have any side effects from it. Early studies show that coronavirus vaccines may provide protection for years to come and you won't always be that young.
The more deadly and transmissible Delta variant of COVID-19 is now spreading in areas of the U.S. where fewer people are vaccinated.
The genomics firm Helix analyzed about 20,000 samples from Covid-19 tests across more than 700 U.S. counties. It found that cases of the variant first documented in India appear to be growing far faster in counties with lower vaccination rates than in areas that have higher rates. [...]
So far, more than 45% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But a recent Bloomberg News analysis found that broad, national numbers often obscure more troubling patterns at the local level.
Less than 25% of the population is fully vaccinated in at least 482 counties, Bloomberg found in an analysis of 2,700 U.S. counties.