“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” President Joe Biden told WHIO-TV in Ohio last month when asked about the status of the ongoing fight against COVID-19, a battle that is closing in on the two-year mark.
But that statement seems to contradict months of guidance by the CDC.
“The unvaccinated. Not the vaccinated, the unvaccinated. That’s the problem. Everybody talks about freedom and not to have a shot or have a test.
Well guess what? How about patriotism? How about making sure that you’re vaccinated, so you do not spread the disease to anyone else,” Biden said during his appearance in Ohio.
As far back as April though, the CDC warned, “People can still get sick and possibly spread COVID-19 to others after being fully vaccinated.” They also updated their guidelines over the summer to say that even vaccinated people should be masked while in crowded indoor spaces, even before the discovery of the highly-contagious nature of the Omicron variant.
Since Omicron’s emergence, breakthrough cases among vaccinated individuals are on the rise, and the U.S. hit a record for single-day COVID diagnoses on Monday despite CDC numbers that state about 73% of the nation’s population is at least partially vaccinated and 62% is fully vaccinated.
However, while hospitalizations are rising, the latest surge in cases has not correlated with a surge in deaths.
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