It's Tuesday, February 2nd. I'm Gideon Ressik.

And I'm Erin Ryan, filling in for Akila Hughes.

And this is what a day reminding you that Groundhog Day is cancelled because time has lost all meaning.

Yeah, maybe he sees a shadow, maybe he doesn't. I still only vaguely know what day of the week it is.

Honestly, that rat should be inside.

On today's show, the newest efforts at restricting voting rights after the election, then some headlines.

But first, the latest.

Variants remain a great concern, and we continue to detect them in the United States,

with at least 33 jurisdictions reporting 471 variant cases as of January 31st.

Yikes. That was CDC director Dr. Rochelle Wylanski at a White House COVID briefing yesterday.

She was talking about the unfortunate topic we've been hearing about for weeks now. Variants.

God damn variants. One way the administration is trying to halt variants from spreading is through more and more vaccinations.

And so we're going to do a little status update on how vaccinations are going overall in the US and in different states.

So Gideon, get us started.

Yes, so the good news here, good place to start is that the daily piece is picking up nationally.

As of Sunday, the CDC reported that over 25 million people have gotten at least one dose.

So around 7 to 8% of the US population is slowly but surely moving in the right direction.

Some experts say that we should now aim to have most Americans vaccinated by late spring or early summer,

especially given those gosh darn variants.

That's a tall order, but hopefully can get done.

And so far, some states have been faster than others.

One example that we've heard quite a bit about is West Virginia, which according to the New York Times,

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