Good morning. We have an update on Covid and the Delta variant. |
 | | Members of the Brownsville, Texas, fire department provided vaccine doses to homebound residents last week.Denise Cathey/The Brownsville Herald, via Associated Press |
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'If you're not vaccinated …' |
It's time for one of this newsletter's occasional updates on the state of the pandemic. The brief version: The situation continues to look reassuring for anybody who is vaccinated — but has become more worrisome for anybody who is not, largely because of the Delta variant. |
Here are three more detailed points: |
1. Cases are no longer falling |
The news about Covid-19 has been mostly positive in the U.S. over recent months. The vaccines continue to work well against every variant, and the number of Americans who have gotten a shot continues to rise. |
But the U.S. still faces two problems. First, the pace of vaccinations has slowed, and a substantial share of Americans — close to one third — remains hesitant about getting a shot. These unvaccinated Americans will remain vulnerable to Covid outbreaks and to serious symptoms, or even death. |
Second, the Delta variant — which appears to be both more contagious and more severe than earlier versions of the virus — is spreading rapidly within the U.S., after having first been identified in India. It now accounts for about 10 percent of cases, according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former F.D.A. commissioner. |
Together, these two forces help explain why new cases have stopped falling: |
 | | Source: The New York Times |
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Many experts are concerned that cases will eventually start to rise as Delta becomes the dominant form of the virus. "We are vulnerable," Dr. Kavita Patel of the Brookings Institution told Yahoo News. On Twitter yesterday, Dr. Robert Wachter of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote: "I'll now bet we'll see significant (incl. many hospitalizations/deaths) surges this fall in low-vaccine populations due to combo of seasonality, Delta's nastiness, & 'back to normal' behavior." |
In addition to being more contagious, Delta also appears to be more severe. As my colleague Keith Bradsher reports about southeastern China, where the variant has been spreading: "Patients are becoming sicker and their conditions are worsening much more quickly." (China has more detailed data than many other countries, because it conducts rapid, widespread testing.) |
But there is still one very big piece of encouraging news: The vaccines continue to work extremely well against the variants, based on the evidence so far. The best performing vaccines vastly reduce the number of Covid cases of any kind and virtually eliminate death. |
"The Delta variant is by far the most contagious variant of this virus we have seen in the entire pandemic," Dr. Ashish Jha said yesterday. "The good news is the data suggests that, if you've been fully vaccinated, you remain protected, that the vaccines hold up." |
The clearest place to see this pattern is Britain, where the Delta variant has spread widely and where the vaccination rate is high. In Britain, there is "still no sign of increase in deaths, well after the strain has become dominant," as Dr. Eric Topol of the Scripps Research Translational Institute noted. |
 | | Source: The New York Times |
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Nothing is more important than vaccination. |
"If you're fully vaxxed, I wouldn't be too worried, especially if you're in a highly vaxxed region," Wachter wrote. "If you're not vaccinated: I'd be afraid. Maybe even very afraid." |
 | | Naftali Bennett, right, on the floor of Parliament after the vote.Dan Balilty for The New York Times |
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- Israel's Parliament voted to approve a coalition government, ousting Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister after 12 years and replacing him with Naftali Bennett, the head of a small right-wing party.
- Bennett, who will hold the job for two years, hailed President Biden as a partner but said it would be a "mistake" for the U.S. to renew the Iran nuclear deal.
- Netanyahu shaped 21st-century Israel. Here's a look at his time in office.
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 | | Biden with Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle yesterday.Andrew Testa for The New York Times |
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- Biden and other Western leaders concluded the G7 summit with a joint declaration criticizing the Chinese and Russian governments. Biden is attending his first NATO summit as president today.
- The Justice Department subpoenaed Apple in 2018 for data belonging to Don McGahn, Donald Trump's White House counsel at the time, and ordered the company not to tell him. The reason is unclear.
- Instead of pushing Ralph Northam to resign as Virginia's governor after a blackface scandal, Black leaders pressed him to make political change. The state has since abolished the death penalty and allocated millions to Black colleges.
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 | | Wasabi is a tiny dog "that feels like he's 10 feet tall," a judge at the Westminster dog show said.Karsten Moran for The New York Times |
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 | | Jason Henry for The New York Times |
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The media equation: A labor dispute at The New Yorker has pitted the magazine's junior employees against some star writers. |
Lives Lived: Ned Beatty was not known as a leading man, but he made a career from supporting roles in some of Hollywood's most enduring films, including "All the President's Men," "Rudy" and "Network." Beatty died at 83. |
 | | The founding members of the Jabbawockeez in Las Vegas last month.Saeed Rahbaran for The New York Times |
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Jabbawockeez keep the masks on |
For more than a decade, the hip-hop dance crew Jabbawockeez have headlined Las Vegas shows, always in their signature white masks and gloves. "We had this idea to create a crew that wasn't about any individual dancer, but about the overall piece of art that we were creating," Kevin Brewer, a founding member, said. |
With that success comes responsibility. Hip-hop is a Black art form, and although the Jabbawockeez are a diverse group — 13 of the current members are Asian American, four are African American, two are Hispanic and one is white — the masks have largely helped them sidestep conversations about race, as Margaret Fuhrer writes in The Times. |
Brewer and the other founding members have personally expressed support for social justice causes like Black Lives Matter in the past year. But they worry that speaking up on the group's popular social media pages may put the brand — and all of the livelihoods it supports — at risk. |
"I do feel this wrestling, where we do have this platform, and I do want to say something," Brewer said. "But at the same time, the weight of it and how big it is … if I take my mask off and say the wrong thing, and somebody's like, 'Hey, you just said the wrong thing, Jabbawockeez going down' — I don't want to jeopardize anything." |
 | | Con Poulos for The New York Times |
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Season two of "Betty," the HBO comedy that follows a crew of female skateboarders in New York City as they navigate the pressures of young adulthood. |
The comedian and actress Quinta Brunson's first book, "She Memes Well," balances jokes, autobiography and serious thoughts about the state of the country. |
The pangram from Friday's Spelling Bee was unlatch. Here is today's puzzle — or you can play online. |
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David |
P.S. Take The Times's 20-day money challenge, with tips and tasks for the uninitiated on banking, investing and more. Sign up here. |
Today's episode of "The Daily" is about Apple and China. On the Book Review podcast, Sasha Issenberg talks about "The Engagement," and J. Hoberman discusses Hollywood history. "Sway" features ProPublica's Jesse Eisinger. |
Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. |
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