Alabama's GOP Governor Unloads on the Unvaccinated

Alabama's Republican governor has directed some harsh words toward residents of her own state in regard to COVID vaccinations. Details and related coverage:

• The blame: "Folks are supposed to have common sense," Kay Ivey told reporters in Birmingham on Thursday, reports Al.com. "It's time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down. ... I've done all I know how to do. I can encourage you to do something, but I can't make you take care of yourself."
• The stats: Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate in the US, with 39.6% of residents fully vaccinated, compared with 48.8% of the US population, per Politico. Meanwhile, the state has seen a 70% increase in daily cases over the past week, notes the Washington Post. The vast majority of new cases and deaths involve unvaccinated residents. Of 529 COVID deaths since April 1, only 20 involved vaccinated people, reports Al.com.

• A hard sell: "I want folks to get vaccinated," says Ivey. "That's the cure. That prevents everything." Asked what she could do to persuade people to get the shots, she responded, "I don't know. You tell me." An AP poll shows that most people who are unvaccinated in the US are unlikely to change their minds.
• More warnings: CDC chief Rochelle Walensky said Thursday that the delta variant is "one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of, and that I have seen in my 20-year career," per CNBC. A research consortium called the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub projects a steady rise in cases and deaths through the fall, per NPR. In mid-October, it foresees 60,000 new cases a day and about 850 daily deaths.
• One view: "If deaths are almost exclusively among those who haven't been vaccinated, which seems to be the case so far, the appropriate governmental response would be to encourage people at any meaningful risk to get vaccinated, but to permit them, as a matter of civil liberties, to assume the risk of not doing so," writes Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine.
• Another: In the Atlantic, David Frum writes that the pandemic in the US would largely be history by now if vaccination rates hadn't tailed off in recent months. "Experts list many reasons for the vaccine slump, but one big reason stands out: vaccine resistance among conservative, evangelical, and rural Americans," he writes. "Pro-Trump America has decided that vaccine refusal is a statement of identity and a test of loyalty."

(More Alabama stories.)