Fauci warns COVID infections in U.S. are 10x too high to end pandemic The U.S. needs to drop from 160,000 to <10,000 new cases a day to get out of the pandemic phase. Eileen Drage O'Reilly Axios

Americans are now getting infected with COVID-19 at 10 times the rate needed to end the pandemic, which will persist until more people get vaccinated, NIAID director Anthony Fauci tells Axios.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — A summer that began with plunging caseloads and real hope that the worst of Covid-19 had passed is ending with soaring death counts, full hospitals and a bitter realization that the coronavirus is going to remain a fact of American life for the foreseeable future.

...(chart)

accination rates are ticking upward, and reports of new infections are starting to fall in some hard-hit Southern states. But Labor Day weekend bears little resemblance to Memorial Day, when the country was averaging fewer than 25,000 cases daily, or to the Fourth of July, when President Biden spoke about nearing independence from the virus.

Why We Can’t Turn the Corner on Covid After a hot vax summer that wasn’t, it’s clearer than ever that there will be no easy end to the pandemic. Joanne Kenen POLITICO

The summer of 2021 began with such promise. On Memorial Day, the traditional start of summer, many Americans thought that the worst of Covid might be over, that masks were out and hugs (or more) might be in. But that optimism has yielded to a more somber and uncertain Labor Day as hot vax summer turned into hot spot autumn.