Editorial

What are you waiting for? Get vaccinated.

Posted

An alarm bell sounded last weekend: The number of New Yorkers recently diagnosed with Covid-19 surged past 1,000 on Saturday for the first time since May. That was a warning sign that people should heed.

Coronavirus case counts are on the rise again, and it’s up to all of us, collectively, to control the spread of this potentially deadly virus. Foremost, that means getting vaccinated. As of last weekend, just over 80 percent of Nassau County residents had received at least one dose of a vaccine. That’s high by most all standards. It’s not high enough, however.

That still leaves 20 percent of the county population — more than 271,000 people — who are yet to be vaccinated. That’s a lot of people among whom the delta variant of the coronavirus can spread, and we know it’s moving rapidly among the unvaccinated.

With easy availability of the vaccine, and its efficacy and safety widely proven, we have to ask: If you’re not vaccinated, what in the world are you waiting for? Why not receive this free inoculation? It could be a matter of life and death for you. At the same time, it’s about restoring normalcy and fully reopening our economy.

Since Gov. Andrew Cuomo lifted most Covid-19 restrictions — including mask-wearing — on June 23, it would be easy to assume the pandemic is over. It’s not. The coronavirus still clearly lurks among us, as demonstrated by the steadily increasing infection rate.

In terms of the case count, we’re now about where we were last summer. With the infection rate hovering just above 1 percent, it’s true that the chance of getting infected is low at the moment. We must keep in mind, however, what happened after last summer’s lull in infections. The virus returned in late fall and winter with a vengeance. We could very well see the same scenario play out this year among the unvaccinated.

So, we’ll say it again: If you haven’t gotten a shot, do it now. Don’t dither. Don’t procrastinate. Just do it.