By Brigid Kennedy The Week

Yet another COVID-19 surge has arrived. Instead of a stretch of predicted decline, cases have risen about 30 percent this month, The New York Times‘ David Leonhardt reports. And while it’s essentially futile to try and predict what’s behind these frustrating numbers (a full explanation remains unclear), what’s better is to focus on how to think about them, Leondhart says.

Very important to remember is that, for most people, the vaccines are still “remarkably effective” at neutering COVID’s disastrous effects, but the “main dividing line” in that sample is age, Leonhardt writies.

For example, in Minnesota the death rate for fully vaccinated people under 50 during the Delta surge was so low that the rate automatically rounded to zero. Washington State saw something similar — in its most recent report, the death rate for fully vaccinated residents under 65 was “too low to be meaningful.”

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