For the third day in a row, Louisiana hospitals reported record-breaking numbers of coronavirus patients, with 2,350 hospitalized across the state, according to a noon update from the Louisiana Department of Health.
Florida, Texas, Missouri, and other southern states are seeing large outbreaks due to the Delta variant of COVID.
Today with Chad Hartman on WCCO Radio, Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of infectious disease at the University of Minnesota, addressed the constantly changing news around COVID, the Delta variant and vaccinations as cases continue to rise around the U.S. and world.
That includes Minnesota where two-thirds of the state is now “high-risk” according to the CDC guidelines.
Osterholm, who says the U.S. has all the tools necessary to fight COVID, says it is unacceptable that we’re still in this situation.
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“We have more vaccine than any other country in the world,” Osterholm told WCCO. “We've had ample opportunity to get it. And today, if Louisiana and Florida were countries not states, they would be the top two highest incidents countries in the world for COVID. More than any of the developing world countries, more than any other country in the world. Louisiana and Florida would be the two highest risk countries in the world. What's wrong with us?”
Osterholm is also critical of some of the incentives being pushed for the vaccine. Minnesota is in the midst of a $100 gift card incentive for those who get their first vaccine shot, just one of many incentive programs around the country.
“I think people have missed the boat here about how to get people to take this vaccine,” Osterholm told Chad Hartman. “And that is if we basically incentivized people, they almost feel like, wait a minute, if you got to pay me to take this, what's wrong with it?”
Osterholm says the better way to handle it is to take away opportunities from the unvaccinated.
“If you want to go to a game, you want to go to a restaurant, you want to go to an event, you've got to have your little card or your cell phone based app that shows that you've been vaccinated,” Osterholm explains. “You know what, for me, I couldn't wait to go to a place like that. I have to tell you right now in the mid-seventies when I first started here, Minnesota was one of the international leaders on indoor air. And the idea that restaurants and bars prohibited smoking. And we heard from the entertainment industry, if you do this, we're going to go under because so many of our clients smoke. Well what they didn't realize was only 30% of Minnesota smoked. 70% didn’t and they wanted to go to bars and restaurants where they didn't have to suck in all the smoke, and business went up. It didn't go down. Today, if we knew there were places I could go where I didn't have to worry about having to wear an N95 (respirator), I'm in the restaurant and I don't have to worry about who I'm sitting next to a theater. I can go to a concert and feel I'm in the safest places I can go.”
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Osterholm adds that this should be a concerted effort by private business and not mandated by local or Federal Governments.
“I think this is now the time to be creative. This is the time to actually take the virus on with something that humans do really, really well. Ingenuity, motivation, and I think this is a time to have these very kinds of discussions and move forward. I couldn't wait to be together with a group of people in a public setting, sitting shoulder to shoulder all of us vaccinated. This vaccine can save lives and what I keep telling people, if it's not your life, save the life of somebody next to you. It could be your kids, could be your family members. It could be anybody. If you don't get infected and don't give it to them, then you will have saved them from that experience. I can't be any more emphatic about it than that.”
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