Delta Blues

The World Health Organization has decided to name variants of the SARS CoV-2 virus after Greek letters because it has decided that naming a virus or variant after where it was first detected is stigmatizing and discriminatory.  Apparently the only people who are going to be stigmatized now are . . . the Greeks.

The decision is retroactive, starting with the British variant, though the idea of stigmatizing the people who once ruled half the world across 24 time zones is sort of ridiculous.  The British variant is now called the Alpha variant, the South African one is called the Beta variant, the Brazilian one is called the Gamma variant, and the new one from India is now called . . . the Delta variant.

That out of the way, the Delta variant of SARS CoV-2 promises to be exponentially worse than any variants proceeding it.  It's already raging in Great Britain and it is likely to come to the United States.  The good news?  The mRNA vaccines available today are effective, provided you get both doses of one.  And there's the rub; only 42 percent of Americans have been fully vaccinated so far, and anyone with a partial vaccination will be as likely to catch the Delta variant and possibly die as anyone who doesn't get a shot at all.  Dr. Anthony Fauci (below) has stressed that people in the U.S. need to get vaccinated as quickly as possible to prevent that.

Oh yeah, the pace of vaccination is slowing.  It's still going up a couple of tenths of a percent every day, but as long as a minority of Americans have both doses of Pfizer or Moderna, none of that will matter once the Delta variant gets here.  Oops!  Correction: The Delta variant is already here!  It now accounts for more than 6 percent of all infections in the United States.

We may be a couple of Greek letters away from a variant that no vaccine will be able to stop if not enough folks get a jab.  Get fully vaccinated, people!  I did.  

And having just had my teeth and gums deep-cleaned, I can honestly tell you that a dozen shots of Novocain in your mouth are far more painful than a COVID shot could ever be.