Opinion: The lives needlessly lost to undervaccination

Opinion | The Lives Lost to Undervaccination, in Charts How many lives could have been saved if states vaccinated more quickly? The New York Times

... many areas and groups of people in the United States are undervaccinated. This has led to preventable deaths throughout the country.

To quantify just how many deaths, we set out to estimate how many lives might have been saved if all states had managed to vaccinate their residents as quickly as the state with the highest vaccination rate (usually Vermont in the period we looked at). ...

The results are striking: During the latest coronavirus wave, in July and August, at least 16,000 deaths could have been prevented if all states had vaccination rates as high as the state with the highest vaccination rate. The number of lives that could have been saved will grow unless vaccination rates in lagging states improve.

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... undervaccination has allowed nearly 12,000 preventable deaths in red states during July and August, more than double the 4,800 in blue states....

But even these numbers significantly understate the cost of undervaccination, because they model only the effect on deaths. Another great benefit of vaccines is that they reduce infections. (Though vaccinated people can still become infected, they are substantially less likely to do so than unvaccinated people.) Reducing infections has enormous effects that build on themselves week after week: Each person gives the virus to fewer people, who give it to fewer people, and so on.

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It is imperative that those who can change the minds of the unvaccinated continue to speak up, including Republican leaders, doctors, community leaders and former vaccine skeptics. Where persuasion fails, political and business leaders should consider other methods like imposing mandates, which work. President Biden’s new vaccine policy represents a significant step in this direction. There is no excuse for silence or hesitation in this race against time.