NEWS

The Delta variant of the coronavirus carries a viral load 1000x higher than the original (Alpha) virus.

PHOTO: POLINA TANKOLEVITCH

CDC: Mask Up and Get Vaccinated or Risk Deadlier COVID-19 Variants

Vast swaths of Ohio and Kentucky remain undervaccinated, even as the highly transmissible Delta variant pushes the states into high risk

BY ALLISON BABKA

When COVID-19 vaccines became widely available earlier this year, Cincinnatians largely rushed to get theirs.

But with a vaccination plateau and the coronavirus becoming even more transmissible in recent weeks, Southwest Ohio isn’t quite out of the woods.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Hamilton County now has a “substantial” risk for coronavirus as of Aug. 2 — a change from earlier this summer when the CDC said the county’s risk was low or moderate. Hamilton’s surrounding counties in Ohio — Butler, Clermont and Warren — also are listed as substantial.

In addition, Hamilton County has a rate of 66.42 coronavirus cases per 100,000 individuals, the CDC says, which is much higher than its rate in late spring when most public health measures were dropped.

A little further to the east and to the north, Adams, Clinton, Greene, Highland and Montgomery counties are faring a bit worse. They’re listed as “high risk,” the CDC’s highest level.

The Kentucky counties near Cincinnati aren’t doing well, either. Boone County is listed as high risk, while the risk in Kenton and Campbell counties is labeled as substantial.

As CityBeat has previously reported, the majority of counties throughout the rest of Kentucky are high risk.

The CDC uses local, state and national data to designate coronavirus hot spots. Earlier during the pandemic, the Ohio Department of Health also had a county-by-county map of risk levels throughout the state but discontinued its map earlier this year.

CDC: This Could Mutate Again

In recent weeks, the CDC has warned that the coronavirus pandemic is far from over and that people should take immediate measures to protect themselves and their loved ones.

The best way to do that? Vaccination, experts say.

During a briefing on July 27, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that the highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus has been dominating COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations throughout the summer.

The Delta variant carries a viral load 1,000-times higher than the original virus — called Alpha — does, making it much easier and faster to transmit among people, including those who have been vaccinated or who show no symptoms, Walensky said.

The virus especially is easy to transmit among others when speaking, singing, sneezing or breathing hard, particularly within indoor areas. Health experts say that Delta is more than twice as easy to transmit than the original virus.

Unvaccinated individuals are at the highest risk for severe infection and substantial health issues, experts say. Additionally, new data shows that vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals who are infected carry the same high levels of the virus, so people who have received a Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 vaccine also

are becoming infected, but their symptoms and rates are less severe.

Vaccinated individuals still can spread COVID-19 though — especially the highly transmissible Delta strain. Walensky said this is a grave concern in areas with low vaccination rates, like many parts of Ohio and Kentucky.

“Unlike the Alpha variant that we had back in May, where we didn’t believe that if you were vaccinated you could transmit further, this is different now with the Delta variant,” Walensky said.

Walensky added that the virus could mutate further and become even more infectious in later iterations.

She added that the country’s overall low vaccination rates enabled the Delta variant in the first place.

“This could have been avoided with higher vaccination coverage in this country,” she said.

No vaccine is 100% effective, but according to Yale University, the Pfizer, Moderna and J&J COVID-19 vaccines are about 95%, 94% and 72% effective, respectively. Experts say that the vaccines largely lessen the effects of COVID-19 and its variants, including Delta.

Walensky also said that the CDC now recommends that all individuals resume wearing face masks indoors and in crowds — even vaccinated individuals — particularly in regions of high transmission. Walensky stressed that because of Delta’s high shareability, it’s much easier to infect people who can’t be vaccinated at this time, such as children under age 11 or immunocompromised people (authorized COVID19 vaccines are available to healthy individuals age 12 and up).

“We’re seeing now that it’s actually possible if you’re a rare breakthrough infection that you can transmit further, which is the reason for the change,” Walensky said.

The CDC also recommended masking for all students and employees in schools from kindergarten through 12th grade.

“The CDC recommends localities encourage universal indoor masking for all teachers, staff, students, and visitors to schools, regardless of vaccination status,” the CDC’s new guidance says. “Children should return to full-time inperson learning in the fall with proper prevention strategies in place.”

In May, the CDC had advised that vaccinated individuals no longer needed to mask up but unvaccinated individuals should continue to wear masks, practice physical distancing and consider vaccination. New data has changed that.

“We’re not changing the science,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, told CNN on July 27 after Walensky’s address. “The virus changed, and the science evolved with the changing virus.”

Schools Consider Masking Again

On July 26, one day before the CDC’s announcement, the Ohio Department of Health shared its COVID-19 precautions for school districts and parents but stopped short of mandating masks for students and employees.

“While there are no mandates associated with this guidance, we believe that the recommendations we are issuing are essential to the health of Ohio’s youth, and the success of the coming school year,” said Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, chief medical officer for the Ohio Department of Health.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently updated its school-opening recommendations, encouraging a “layered approach,” including maskwearing for anyone older than age 2.

Dr. Patty Manning-Courtney, chief of staff at Cincinnati Children’s, said on July 27 that many school safety measures rely on adults rather than children who may not be eligible for the vaccine.

“I don’t want to see the day where somebody under age 12 was infected because someone in their life chose not to be vaccinated or chose not to wear a mask,” Manning-Courtney said. “That would be a sad day.”

The morning after the CDC’s July 27 address, Cincinnati Children’s sent a statement to media that recommended masking for all students and school employees.

“Cincinnati Children’s recommends that all children returning to in-person school wear masks, regardless of vaccination status. Many children are not yet eligible to be vaccinated against COVID-19, and others should mask because no vaccine is 100% effective at preventing infection,” the statement said. “In addition, teachers and staff should continue to wear masks, regardless of vaccination status.”

Cincinnati Public Schools has been exploring a mask mandate for the 2021-2022 school year but had not yet announced its decision as of press time. CityBeat has reached out to the district for comment.

Low Vaccination Rates Trouble Ohio and Kentucky

The CDC’s new recommendations come as the Delta variant sweeps across Midwestern and Southern states as well as the nation’s population centers. Overall, 67.5% of United States residents age 12 and up have gotten at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 58.1% are fully vaccinated. According to the CDC, a “fully vaccinated” person is one who is two weeks past their second dose of a two-dose vaccine (Pfizer and Moderna) or two weeks after a single-dose vaccine (J&J).

COVID-19 vaccines are not yet authorized for people age 11 and younger.

Scientists have said that for group immunity from coronavirus to happen and for the pandemic to end, the country’s full vaccination rate needs to be at about 70%-80%.

But regions throughout the country are seeing much, much lower numbers of vaccinated individuals, particularly since vaccination rates dramatically slowed in May when public health measures began to ease. Experts have said that while national and state numbers are helpful, local vaccination rates control how much and how quickly the coronavirus spreads throughout an area, especially near state borders where people frequently travel.

As of Aug. 2, 49.39% of all Ohioans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Only 46.14% of residents within the state are fully vaccinated.

In Hamilton County, 51.82% have gotten one COVID-19 shot, while 48.34% are fully vaccinated.

Across the river, 52% of Kentucky’s population has gotten one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine. The data available does not break out full vaccination.

In Kenton County, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, 55.71% of the population has had at least one dose of an authorized vaccine.

But many counties within Ohio and Kentucky are seeing much lower vaccination rates, which troubles health experts because of Delta’s highly infectious nature.

As of Aug. 2, most of Kentucky’s counties were red or orange on the CDC’s tracker, which means high or substantial risk of virus transmission. In Spencer County, for example, only 24% of the population has been vaccinated at least once.

Similarly, only 15.77% have gotten one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in Holmes County in Ohio.

Ohio, Kentucky Governors Hesitant to Reinstate Public Health Mandates

In some regions across the country where coronavirus cases have skyrocketed, such as in Los Angeles and St. Louis, officials are implementing new health restrictions and are asking residents — including those who have been fully vaccinated — to wear masks when outside the home.

Companies throughout Greater Cincinnati — including some hospitals — are considering mandating COVID19 vaccines for staff, WXIX-TV recently reported.

But Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine told CNN on Aug. 2 that he will not consider statewide mask mandates or other public health protections again, despite the state’s sharp rise in coronavirus cases. WEWS-TV in Cleveland recently reported that Ohio’s COVID-19 cases had increased by more than 1,000 for several days in a row.

“We have had a significant increase in vaccinations in the last week or so,” DeWine said.

Until May, DeWine and the Ohio Department of Health had pushed several public health measures to corral the coronavirus, including masking, evening curfews, business capacity limits, social distancing and other actions. Ohio also used the Vax-a-Million sweepstakes — with winners receiving $1 million or full-ride scholarships to public universities within the state — to entice residents to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

But the state ended all health orders on June 2 despite falling far short of several benchmarks that DeWine had set earlier in the year, including hitting an average of 50 cases or fewer per 100,000 residents over the course of a two-week time frame.

Likewise, Kentucky is not considering statewide mandates at this time, despite being hit hard by the Delta variant.

During a media briefing on July 29 — two days after the CDC resumed recommending mask wearing — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear strongly pushed universal masking for Kentucky’s schools that are returning to in-person activities in August. The governor noted that the Delta variant was quickly moving throughout the state, and masks and vaccinations were essential to stopping it from doing further harm.

“This Delta variant is aggressively spreading across this country, and places that haven’t taken steps are seeing results that we should know by now — widespread outbreaks, clusters, large amounts of quarantines,” Beshear said. “We don’t have to have that happen. We have a very simple equation: vaccinations, plus (when we need to) mask-wearing equals we can do everything that we want in our Commonwealth and our economy.”

Beshear also said that all state buildings will require masks, regardless of the wearer’s vaccination status. That’s in line with new requirements that federal employees and contractors wear masks, as U.S. President Joe Biden outlined in late July.

But as he did previously, Beshear would not commit to mandating masks or other restrictions at this time, leaving those as options later.

“I’m not currently considering the mask mandate, but we will watch what’s happening,” Beshear told media. “It’s on the table if it’s needed.”

From March 1 to July 28, the majority of COVID-19 cases (94.5%), hospitalizations (91.8%) and deaths (88.8%) were among unvaccinated or partially vaccinated Kentucky residents, said Dr. Steven Stack, commissioner for the Kentucky Department for Public Health. Stack noted the Delta variant’s swift spread recently, particularly over the past several weeks.

And during a briefing on July 19, Beshear said that younger Kentucky residents are increasingly getting the Delta variant of COVID-19, largely because they are the ones who are less likely to have been vaccinated. Stack added that the Delta variant was “spreading like wildfire.”

Jerome Adams, the previous U.S. Surgeon General appointed by former President Donald Trump, recently said that it was “premature” to ease mask restrictions in late May and early June, as Kentucky, Ohio and many other states had done. The CDC had recommended that fully vaccinated individuals no longer needed to wear masks for their own protection or the protection of others, but many leaders of many local governments — including DeWine and Beshear — used that to walk back all mask mandates, eliminating a preventative measure while vaccination rates continued to decrease.

Find free COVID-19 vaccines in Ohio at coronavirus.ohio.gov and in Kentucky at kycovid19.ky.gov.

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CITY DESK Ohio Senate Candidate JD Vance Says Parents Deserve More Votes Than Child-Free Citizens Do

BY ALLISON BABKA

Apparently, you can’t be good at legislating if you don’t have children — especially if you’re a Democrat.

That’s what Middletown native and Republican Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance claimed during a speech at the Future of American Political Economy conference.

“The ‘childless left’ have no physical commitment to the future of this country,” The Guardian reported Vance as saying during his July 23 address. “Why is this just a normal fact of … life for the leaders of our country to be people who don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring?”

Vance specifically referenced Democrats Vice President Kamala Harris, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Senator Cory Booker and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Harris is the stepmother to husband Doug Emhoff’s two children, while Buttigieg and husband Chasten are looking to adopt — something conservatives routinely advocate for during anti-abortion efforts (though they are less happy when same-sex couples do it).

Booker and Ocasio-Cortez do not have children, though Booker’s girlfriend, actress Rosario Dawson, has adopted a child.

Vance also advocated for giving parents additional votes on behalf of their children.

“The Democrats are talking about giving the vote to 16-year-olds. Let’s do this instead. Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of the children,” Vance said. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats have voiced support for lowering the voting age to 16.)

When asked if that would inevitably give disproportionate legislative control to parents over non-parents, Vance replied yes.

JD Vance PHOTO: GAGE SKIDMORE

“When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power, you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our Democratic republic, than people who don’t have kids,” The Hill reports Vance as saying. “Let’s face the consequences and the reality; if you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”

Conservative Republicans Senator Marco Rubio and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions also gave addresses during the Future of American Political Economy conference. The conference was hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which promotes conservatism on college campuses.

Vance is a Yale Law School graduate who became a venture capitalist in San Francisco with controversial billionaire Peter Thiel. He has since moved back to Ohio to found another venture enterprise in Cincinnati with backing from Thiel. Vance is running for the Senate seat that Rob Portman will vacate in 2022, and his candidacy also is backed by Thiel.

Vance had written columns and social media posts criticizing controversial former President Donald Trump but reversed his stance earlier in July while deleting those critical posts. Vance’s book Hillbilly Elegy often is credited with foretelling Trump’s rise to political power but also is frequently criticized for not depicting Appalachian life authentically.