It's still around

The authorities here in Oregon are sending out signals that Covid is over, but it's still hanging around. Reviewing the latest figures, I see that while the back-to-school surge of the spring is clearly behind us, we still don't have hospitalizations and ICU patient levels down to where they were at the end of March.

Given how wicked they say the Delta variant is, we may not get all the way back to those end-of-March levels for some time. People who aren't vaccinated, which I hear is 30 percent of Oregon adults and every Oregon child under the age of 12, are still at risk of getting sick. And of course, there are "breakthrough" cases, in which even the vaccinated get infected.

I'm still wearing a mask in the grocery store, whether they make me do it or not. I don't mind.