It has been two and a half years since the COVID-19 pandemic started. The more that time has gone on, there have been less and less people that wear masks in public areas. While that isn’t an issue if they are fully vaccinated, there still are people that are unvaccinated and still bring risk even to those who are vaccinated.

According to the CDC, the number of new cases in the United States has been going down since July, but the number is still very high. It was reported on Sep. 28, that there were 63,565 new cases of COVID in the United States alone. Compared to China, there were only 1,198 new cases. China also has four times the population of the US.

The most surprising part about this graph is that the day with the highest number of new cases was on Jan. 10, 2022. On that day, there were 1,272,916 new cases of COVID in the US. Even back then, people were not taking COVID as seriously as when the pandemic started. I don’t like the fact that people have cared less and less about COVID since it started. We were all most scared of COVID when it had the lowest number of cases, but when it’s at its highest, no one bats an eye.

The numbers back then don’t matter now, as the general director of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said that we have never been in a better position to end the pandemic and that the end is in sight.

It looks like numbers could be going down even further according to the amount of people vaccinated. In the United States, 262,116,767 people, or 80.1% of the population, have at least one dose. The number for fully vaccinated people isn’t bad either, 225,284,115 people, or 68.4% of the population, are fully vaccinated.

I wasn’t expecting this many people to be vaccinated in the first place, I thought there would be more people against getting vaccinated. The fact that 4 out of 5 Americans have at least one dose of the vaccine is a very good statistic. I would also assume if people have their first dose, they would get all the doses, so the 68.4% could grow in the future. I’m sure the number of fully vaccinated people is better in other countries, but when your country’s population is 330 million people, it’s awesome to see 225 million of those people are fully vaccinated.

With this many people having at least one dose, almost no one now uses a mask. I don’t think anyone needs to wear a mask anymore. However, I do think that if someone isn’t feeling well but they’re still going out to places or events, they should wear a mask.

According to the CDC, the best masks to wear are the respirator, or N95, masks. The masks increase your resistance to getting COVID by 83%. Personally, I’ve never seen someone wear these in school or in any public place. I can understand why people wouldn’t want to wear these because they look hard to wear and if people want to stay safe, they probably would just wear a basic surgical mask. Those masks give a 66% resistance to COVID.

Even if the number of new COVID cases are very high in some areas, I still don’t think people should worry about COVID. There are many big gatherings that happen across the country where, if any, very little new COVID cases get reported. However, if people are feeling sick, there is no reason to go out and risk anyone else getting sick.