If you’re at all eligible, and have not yet done so, please get vaccinated asap against COVID-19.
Do it for yourself.
Do it for our children.
Do it for those you live and walk among.
Getting vaccinated, and exercising the common-sense, common-courtesy tactic of wearing a mask while in public and around others are the layperson’s best ways at this point to help defeat the coronavirus delta variant that is now showing potent strength and resolve in seeking and striking new victims.
As of Tuesday, Georgia has recorded 1 million confirmed cases of coronavirus infection. Worse yet, the virus has now killed more than 19,000 people here.
This in a state where barely 4 in 10 people are fully vaccinated.
These numbers should stun – and spur fast action to help where we can by doing the prudent things for ourselves and others.
Today, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Editorial Board joins more than 50 other news organizations nationwide in urging unvaccinated people to take the shot. The Boston Globe, which is coordinating this journalistic effort, calls it “The last best shot.”
The red lines of current coronavirus statistics show that sentence is no exaggeration.
And the stats confirm the sentiments relayed on these opinion pages during the long slog of this pandemic. Doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, public health experts and even COVID-19 patients have recited here the experiences of what they’ve seen and suffered through. It has made for somber, sobering reading.
Yet, hospitals and ICU’s are filling up again with coronavirus patients across Georgia and the nation. Doctors say delta’s victims are younger and getting sicker quicker. The death toll continues to climb.
And the vast majority of people hospitalized now with COVID-19 are unvaccinated.
Based on the best of scientific knowledge, we don’t seem nearly at the end of this plague. Our individual stubbornness is literally giving life to this dangerous virus.
Too many Georgians and Americans seem intent on squandering our best chance to unite as a community to battle COVID-19′s spread. Widespread rejection of fact-based science in favor of misinformation, or outright falsehoods that confirm only what we want to mistakenly believe has cost the lives or health of many fellow Georgians.
Like them, we are – or were -- a part of communities where individual actions can affect others, and ultimately, all of us. We move about our towns, we interact with people, both the vaccinated and the too-many unvaccinated.
And we are reaping the dangerous results of not heeding public health pleas as this virus spreads.
Over the course of just 14 days this month, the number of Georgians hospitalized with COVID-19 has increased 85 percent, standing at some 4,475 people as of Monday afternoon.
Vaccination and the reasonable precaution of properly wearing a facial mask can help break COVID-19′s strength and spread.
Whether that happens is up to us, our consciences – and our actions.
We can do better.
We must do better.
If you haven’t yet been vaccinated, please do so now.
The Editorial Board.
Opinion commentary excerpts on COVID-19
From an Aug. 1 editorial:
Disbelief, or doubt, should not prove dangerous.
Especially not to others who haven’t signed up for the added risk.
Those points stand out as Georgia and the rest of the United States are swept into another wave of COVID-19 cases — driven largely by people who haven’t been vaccinated.
From an Aug. 1 guest column by 6 metro Atlanta nursing executives
“I was fighting for my life,” Anetrice Terry recalls. The Lithonia resident contracted COVID-19 in January and spent a month in the hospital. Too weak even to walk to the bathroom on her own, she struggled to breathe.
Terry made it. But she still needs physical therapy.
Grateful for her recovery, she’s looking out for others by sharing the simple way to prevent and protect: get vaccinated.
Terry was diagnosed just as the nation’s vaccination efforts were getting underway and wasn’t yet eligible for a shot. But today, COVID vaccines are widely available for those ages 12 and up.
“A lot of people think COVID-19 is fake, that it’s pneumonia, the flu, but no, it is real. It’s awful,” she says. “Please, please, please, I cannot stress this enough. Get vaccinated.
Please get vaccinated.”
If you’ve been on the fence about getting vaccinated, take Ms. Terry’s advice. It’s especially timely as we see a significant upswing of COVID cases in Georgia’s emergency rooms due to the highly contagious Delta variant.
We are seeing a sharp rise in hospitalizations.
From an Aug. 10 guest column by a state senator who’s a metro Atlanta physician:
Georgia, like much of the country, is in the midst of a cresting “fourth wave” of the COVID-19 pandemic, and finds itself among the states seeing the highest jump in hospitalizations over the last two weeks.
With only 4 in 10 Georgians fully vaccinated against the virus, and a new school year upon us as the delta variant continues its relentless blitz through our population, there has never been more urgency to protect our communities from further illness, injury, and death by taking bold moves to help more of our population get vaccinated.
