Former President Obama is hosting a 60th birthday bash for himself and hundreds of guests on Martha’s Vineyard this coming weekend amid heightened public health concerns — locally and nationally — about the COVID-19 Delta variant.
Why it matters: The recent breakthrough cases in nearby Provincetown, Massachusetts, after the July Fourth holiday showed the continued risk of spread even between vaccinated people — prompting new masking guidelines from the CDC.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Sunday that the United States is unlikely to return to lockdowns but that the "outbreak" driven by the Delta variant is likely to get worse.
Police in Paris deployed tear gas Saturday during clashes with thousands of demonstrators protesting a new law mandating universal vaccinations for health workers and pandemic passes for all restaurants and domestic travel.
The big picture: While thousands of people protested across France, the Washington Post notes that polls show most people in the country back the pandemic measures, introduced to curb spiking COVID-19 cases driven largely by the Delta variant.
52.1% of France's population has been fully vaccinated against the virus as of Friday, according to official figures.
Of the 164 million vaccinated Americans, around 125,000 people have tested positive for breakthrough infections and 0.001% have died, according to state data compiled from state dashboards by NBC and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Why it matters: While "breakthrough cases" have been getting media attention, the low numbers show that the pandemic is mostly a threat for the unvaccinated population.
Memorials to honor the more than 600,000 Americans who have died from the coronavirus are emerging in states around the country, but a national memorial may be far off, AP reports.
The big picture: State memorials can more easily capture the nuances of remembering the government's response to the pandemic — which is intertwined with remembering the lives lost, according to James Young, founding director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies.
The Biden administration's handling of the Delta surge has left Americans confused and frustrated, fueling media overreaction and political manipulation.
Why it matters: The past year and a half have left Americans cynical about the government's COVID response, and — in many cases — misinformed or uninformed. We're getting fog and reversals when steady, clear-eyed, factual information is needed more than ever.
