NIH Director Francis Collins Calls Unvaccinated Americans “Sitting Ducks”

The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr Francis Collins, called unvaccinated Americans “sitting ducks” because he made a grim prediction that the United States could see 200,000 new cases of coronavirus per day over the years. next two weeks.

Collins issued his warning on Sunday as the CDC reported a seven-day moving average for new cases of 119,523 – an increase of more than 700% from early July.

“I’ll be surprised if we don’t see 200,000 cases a day over the next two weeks, and it’s heartbreaking considering we never thought we would be back in this space,” Collins told Fox. News.

– It was January-February, it shouldn’t be August. But here we are with the Delta variant, which is so contagious, and this heartbreaking situation where 90 million people are still unvaccinated who are ducks sitting for this virus and that’s the mess we’re in.

“We are in a wounded world and this is a critical time to try to do all we can to turn the tide.”

As of Sunday, about 196.5 million people, or 59.2% of the total United States population, had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while about 167.4 million people, or 50.4% of the total population of the United States, had been fully vaccinated.

Weekly vaccination rates have declined, albeit slowly. As of Thursday, the 7-day average number of administered vaccine doses reported to the CDC per day was 699,068, a modest 0.03% decrease from the previous week.

On Sunday, Dr Collins argued that masks are “a life-saving medical device” before adding that “it is truly unfortunate that politics and polarization have stood in the way of a simple public health measure.”

Since the start of last week, the issue of masks warrants for children in schools has sparked debate about the idea nationwide, with many passionate parents like OutKick founder Clay Travis, who dispute with a Tennessee school board drew support from the former NFL star quarterback. Jay Cutler.

Critics of the school mask warrants point to CDC data that supports children’s safety from the more serious effects of COVID-19.

And as more Americans begin to wear masks more than a year after the onset of the pandemic, Dr Collins warns those who continue to forgo face covers and the coronovirus vaccine are in danger, believe it or not.

The super contagious variant of the Indian delta, which the NIH reports was prevented by two injections of Moderna vaccine, is now responsible for more than 90% of new cases of Covid in the United States, leading to the current outbreak from the country.

However, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine – the most commonly used vaccine in the United States – was only 42% effective against the infection, while the vaccine Moderna was only 76% effective in July.

For the study, posted on the medRxiv.org preprint server – meaning it has yet to be peer reviewed – the team collected data on more than 25,000 Minnesotans from January to July.

While the vaccines remained about as effective as advertised, around 90%, during the first six months of the year, their effectiveness began to decline in June.

However, the effectiveness dropped sharply in July when the variant moved to the United States.

The change in vaccine effectiveness corresponds to a massive increase in the prevalence of the Delta variant in Minnesota, from 0.7% prevalence in May to over 70% in July.

Meanwhile, the Kent ‘Alpha’ variant, the previous dominant strain in the United States, declined in prevalence from 85 percent to 13 percent over the same period.

Even despite an increase in peak infections, vaccines were still effective in preventing hospitalizations and severe cases from the virus, both of which had hospitalization rates of less than 25%.

Currently, there are three Covid vaccines available in the United States.

The Pfizer vaccine is the most popular, having been used 197 million times since receiving Emergency Use Clearance (EUA) from the FDA in December 2020.

The Moderna vaccine, which also received EUA in December, has been used more than 140 million times.

Only one single-dose vaccine is available in the United States – the Johnson & Johnson vaccine – which has been used 13.7 million times.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Covid patients in U.S. hospitals are unvaccinated, while those vaccinated tend to have milder cases – or be completely asymptomatic.

As of Sunday, August 15, there had been 36,657,821 cases of coronavirus and 621,325 deaths nationwide.