Good evening. We begin this Friday night with the weight of a week's worth of evidence that our struggle with COVID will not be over any time soon

Unless, of course, a lot more people get vaccinated without that even though this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated

It's going to continue to limit what the vaccinated can do as well. That's where we are tonight. The country is now averaging close to 45,000 new cases a day about four times more than a month ago.

At the same time, only about 600,000 vaccine doses are being administered daily now. That's down from a peak of more than four and a half million a day in March.

So now with a much faster spreading delta variant by far the dominant strain, hospital intensive care units are once again getting crowded filling up.

Localities are once again imposing mask mandates. The NFL this week composing new penalties on teams without breaks due to unvaccinated players.

Even a number of red state governors and other conservative politicians and TV personalities began shedding months of vaccine denial and defiance. Not soon enough.

In Alabama, for example, the governor today pushed hard on people to get the vaccine. Only 33.9% in her state have. That's the worst in the nation.

Another thing that's become clear this week is that some people for many reasons just don't want to get the shot. Not even as he ends Ellie Reeve discovered when they've got the best reason in the world to just roll up their sleeve.

Did anyone you know get COVID my son had COVID how old is the eight. Wow. So that's like pretty rare for like a young kid. What what was that like?

He's sick a lot. He's been sick a lot for a while and he's still sick. So I want to be getting looked at and see if there's further damage. I don't know. I mean, he got real sick.

Feaver every day for weeks. Are you guys going to get the vaccine? No. No vaccine. How come? I just don't trust the government.

It is extraordinary to hear that an eight year old child child sick for weeks with fever still sick. Maybe going to go see a doctor, but the parents the family still won't get vaccinated.

Tonight conservative radio talk show host Phil Valentine is in the hospital with COVID for months. He's downplayed the need for most people to get vaccinated today. His family posted this on social media.

He reads in part Phil would like for his listeners to know that while he has never been an anti-vaxxer. He regrets not being more vehemently pro vaccine and looks forward to being able to more vigorously advocate that position as soon as he's back on air, which we all hope will be soon.

The statement concludes quote, please continue to pray for his recovery and please go get vaccinated.

A vaccine doubters family telling people on his behalf to get vaccinated, which is certainly welcome every voice helps. But again, this comes after far too many people have died unnecessarily, including some who in their very last unassisted breaths before being put on a ventilator.

Have begged for a dose of the vaccine. It's a story I ran decay her quite a bit during her visit to a hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. She joins us now. So you went to the COVID for the hospital. What did you see there?

Anderson, we're at Baptist Medical Center on the COVID floor in Jacksonville, and I saw doctors and nurses desperately trying to save lives, but they're really up against the numbers. The number of COVID patients is increasing right now.

They have 349 COVID patients, 74 of them are in the ICU, 72 of those 74 are on ventilators. That's how serious it is. They're also turning regular hospital beds now into ICU beds because they need them so badly. We were there yesterday, and on that same day, they had 60 new COVID patients come in.

And I'm told that 57 of those 60 were eligible for the vaccine, and Anderson only one of them had actually received it. And that's the problem. 99.6% of the COVID patients at that hospital are unvaccinated.

So I spoke to one nurse, and she told me that in their desperate times here they are facing a ventilator or being intubated. These unvaccinated patients are begging for the vaccine. Listen to this.

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