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The nation remains locked in a life or death debate with 66 million Americans over the rightness of being vaccinated against COVID-19. About half of the unvaccinated – an estimated 12% to 18% of eligible Americans  – stubbornly refuse the shot for reasons ranging from distrust of government or health institutions, to an embrace of conspiracies, to a fear of needles. The rest of the holdouts are those who simply haven't gotten around to it (a dwindling percentage), are in still a wait-and-see frame of mind or will be vaccinated only if required to do so. (10/19)

The U.S. rollout of Covid-19 booster shots has been defined, unfortunately, by confusion. Last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved additional shots for many people who had received the Pfizer vaccine, but not for anyone who’d gotten Moderna or Johnson & Johnson. And in contrast to health authorities in several other countries, the FDA did not sanction allowing people to get booster shots that didn’t match their original vaccinations. (Max Nisen, 10/19)

By now, it’s generally understood that we are not going to see the end of Covid on any simple timetable and that what we should expect instead is a world where the disease becomes something that we live with — as an endemic illness transformed by the combination of vaccinations, boosters and immunity from prior infection into a tolerable risk. The conversation about how best to encourage vaccination at the margins is all about how we can hurry up and finally reach that stage. But for areas with high vaccination rates, especially, a crucial question is what happens when we get there. What does adapting permanently to endemic Covid look like in places — especially blue states, and especially their most liberal enclaves — that have relied on stringent measures whenever cases surge? (Ross Douthat, 10/19)