Is anyone else watching Love Island?

I think this is really love this website's commitment to serious discourse and just bullsh**t trash reality TV.

Hello and welcome to the 538 Politics Podcast. I'm Gaelin Drouk and today we're again talking about the politics of the coronavirus

and efforts to mitigate it. The number of COVID cases in the US is surging largely due to the Delta variant.

During the summer trough, we were seeing 10 to 15,000 reported cases per day, but that number is now up to 60,000 and rising.

97% of the current hospitalizations and 99% of the deaths are among unvaccinated people according to the CDC.

So while there have been breakthrough cases amongst vaccinated people, the vaccine is still overwhelmingly effective at preventing severe cases and death.

As of right now, 58% of Americans 12 and up are fully vaccinated and the vaccination rate has fallen from over 3 million vaccinations per day in April to about 500,000 per day now.

In response to the rise in cases, the CDC recommended this week that vaccinated people were masks indoors in places with significant community spread.

Nearly 2 thirds of US counties qualify under that CDC guideline. The federal government and some states are also taking measures to try to increase vaccination rates, particularly amongst public employees and healthcare workers.

So today, we're going to talk about what Americans make of the rise in cases and mitigation efforts, what politicians are doing, and how that all squares with what public health experts are saying.

Here with me to do that are senior science writer Maggie Curth, Lamaggy.

Hi.

Also here with us is politics reporter Alex Samuel. Hey Alex.

Hey, Galen.

And elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Hello, Jeff. Hey, Galen.

So Jeff, I know you have been digging into some of the polling on where Americans heads are at with this news to start off how worried are Americans at this point about the recent increase in COVID cases?

I think the takeaway from the data that we're seeing in polling is that Americans are maybe moderately more worried.

There was an Ipsos poll that showed an 11 point increase in sort of a concern about returning to normalcy and returning to normal life activities since May. So maybe that would suggest the concern is up in response to the Delta variant.

But at the same time, morning consult has been tracking data on how concerned people are about the coronavirus in their community.

And that's only ticked up a couple points in terms of severely concerned. To me, that just suggests that people are yes a little more worried, but that doesn't mean that I think the potential dangers of the Delta variant have really struck home and have scared a lot of Americans more than they were already worried.

Yeah, where does the bulk of Americans live is the majority with not too concerned. You mentioned the tread lines, but is that the majority of Americans?

...