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Ivey went on to describe the shots as “safe” and “effective,” saying, “The data shows it works. [It] cost you nothing. It saves lives. “
But the governor’s remarks became sharper when she was pressed to find out what it would take for more Alabamans to get vaccinated.
“I don’t know. You tell me,” Ivey said. [are] supposed to have common sense. But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated people, not the common people. It’s the unvaccinated people who let us down.
Alabama remains the state with perhaps the lowest vaccination rate in the country, according to the CDC: only 39.6 percent of its residents aged 12 and older have been fully vaccinated, compared with 48.8 percent Americans nationwide who have been vaccinated.
On Thursday, Ivey told reporters she had “done everything I can do” to increase her condition’s immunization numbers.
“I can encourage you to do something,” she said, “but I can’t make you take care of yourself.”
In recent days, federal health officials have warned of an “unvaccinated pandemic” as the highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus spreads across the country.
The Delta variant now accounts for more than 83% of the virus circulating in the United States, according to the CDC, and unvaccinated people account for 97% of hospitalizations and deaths related to the coronavirus nationwide.
Meanwhile, the White House has toughened its rhetoric towards social media companies like Facebook and conservative media including Fox News, urging them to stop the proliferation of vaccine misinformation.
A senior spokesperson for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a White House official tested positive for Covid-19 this week, and the Capitol Chief Medical Officer is considering reimposing a mask recommendation on the inside the complex.
Asked Thursday about the possibility of a mask mandate for vaccinated Americans, President Joe Biden told reporters his administration “would follow the science.” Government health experts, he said, “were examining all possibilities.”
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