reduced is probably a lot less than say if you are in missouri, northern arkansas or north florida where transmission is starting to rage again, see you may have to fine tune your behaviors depending where you are in the country. we heard dr. wilensky call it a pandemic of the unvaccinated. unvaccinated communities are being battered by this. what are your predictions? what are we going to see in the coming weeks here? i think what we re going to see is, you know, what we have seen so far, is we look for the one-two punch, high delta, low vaccination rates. that s why it started first in missouri, it has gone down into arkansas, into louisiana and now it is spreading east across the southern united states. and there are some big areas of vulnerability here in texas, especially in our rural east texas and parts of the panhandle. that will be the epicenter of the epidemic i think for the next few weeks across the summer. if you notice, it doesn t look
moderna vaccine, even the j&j vaccine seems robust against the delta variant. that s the dominant one in the foreseeable future, and two doses of the mrna vaccination seem robust against about all the variants. i have optimism we ll be able to if we can get everybody vaccinated, at least for the time being, do pretty well. maybe later on we ll need a boost whether it s a boost that s specific for one of the other variants that may arise or just to get our virus neutralizing antibodies, meaning a third immunization. but the key right now is we ve got to halt the long hall covid cases, especially among young people and the hospitalizations in the states where we have the one, two hit, high delta, low v vaccination. dr. anthony fauci is
cautioning vaccinated americans to consider wearing masks in areas where there are high rates of transmission. if you re already vaccinated, what s the benefit of wearing a mask in those areas? well, the benefit is let s take a state like missouri. a lot of people are going into intensive care unit beds in southwest missouri. again, what s happened, low vaccination. high delta. the force of transmission, the force of infection is very high. as good as the vaccines are, over 95% protective, they re not perfect. so when we get the flairs in areas where there s lots and lots of transmission, we may want to wear masks when we re going indoors or crowded places. and again, this is the reality of what dr. fauci calls the two americas. i ve called the two covid nations. in the second covid nation with high transmission because of the factors of delta and low vaccinations, that may be the reality for a while. doctor, the tokyo olympics are still just a few weeks away.
they re not eligible to get vaccinated. we have to protect the kids as well to get every adult and adolescent possible. if you re in the northeast, in massachusetts or vermont or up where you are, wolf, in washington, d.c., things are looking very promising. but there are whole parts of the country right now that are very vulnerable. you have to worry about both the young kids who are not vaccinated and going into stores even if you are vaccinated. and some places, as you know, dr. hotez, like los angeles county, are even encouraging fully vaccinated people to wear masks indoors again. do you think that s necessary? it s going to be necessary in areas where you ve got a lot of transmission, again, from low vaccination/high delta. the vaccines are great. make no mistake about it. over 90% protective. but they re not 100%. for some immunocompromised people, they don t take as well. for those individuals we re going to have to think about wearing masks when you go indoors.