Skip to content
Connect
Stories

The good news: Our region has the highest vaccination rates in the country. The bad news: We can’t secede

People in this story

Boston Globe, May 2021

The good news: Our region has the highest vaccination rates in the country, with Massachusetts second only to New Hampshire when it comes to people who have gotten at least one shot of the COVID vaccine. The bad news: We can’t secede.

Not that we’d want to, right? Right? Sure, closing our borders has a certain appeal for those of us enamored of environmental regulations, sane gun safety measures, common decency, and herd immunity. But we all have loved ones out there in the world beyond, and, even now, the United States still seems like quite a good notion. And so it is that just as we were all at the mercy of those who refused to mask up and take other precautions that would have slowed the spread of COVID over the last year, we are now at the mercy of those who won’t take the shot. That stubborn fact remains as maddening as it ever was.

Nationally, about 30 percent of Americans are reluctant to get the vaccine, and though that number will drop, experts are saying it won’t get low enough to give herd immunity. In some states, including Wyoming, North Dakota, and Mississippi, people are super hesitant to be vaccinated. Which means that COVID hangs around, and mutates,and even in states with high vaccination rates that’s a scary prospect.

Continue reading at the Boston Globe.

More Stories

Picture of Dasani water bottles.

Gov. Healey to sign order banning single-use plastic bottles for state agencies

09.21.2023
Co-founder Andrew Song of solar geoengineering startup Make Sunsets holds a weather balloon filled with helium, air and sulfur dioxide at a park in Reno, Nevada, United States on February 12, 2023.

Some Politicians Want to Research Geoengineering as a Climate Solution. Scientists Are Worried

09.18.2023
Plastics and other trash littered a salt marsh in Chelsea in April.

Massachusetts lags on banning plastics

09.25.23
Op-eds