Sadly, many senior citizens have not been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, which is causing hospitalizations across the country to soar as the highly contagious delta variant spreads rapidly. The U.S. can now boast that is has a much higher share of seniors without full vaccine protection than many other wealthy countries, which means that we will likely see a disproportionate number of deaths of senior Americans compared to other developed countries. In contrast, unvaccinated seniors in Britain, Canada and Spain are very rare. Even London, which has higher rates of vaccine hesitancy among seniors than the rest of Britain, is far ahead of the United States in its vaccination rates. Thankfully, California is doing much better than other states. Low elderly vaccination rates in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana and Nevada have coincided with surging rates of hospitalizations and deaths. Next on the list are likely to be Colorado, Kansas and North Dakota which have not yet experienced severe Delta outbreaks but has low senior vaccination rates.
