Americans â as well as other people in nations around the world â are being bombarded almost daily with updates about the highly transmissible coronavirus Delta variant. Necessary and, more than that, urgent: Delta is shaping up to be a major killer of the unvaccinated, and not necessarily excluding young people, even schoolchildren. It has become clear that this variant remains extremely difficult to contain. Time will tell its ultimate toll of illness and death. But COVID-19, which wreaked such a toll of death and serious illness for more than a year, has not gone away, and its terrifying impact is not destined to disappear anytime soon, despite the vaccines that have been developed.