As of 15 January, close to 12.2 million doses of the COVID vaccine have been administered, and nearly four people per hundred have received at least one dose, according to national statistics compiled by the CDC.
States with the highest vaccination rates included West Virginia, Alaska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, averaging about seven vaccinations per hundred in population.
Vermont, Missouri, Tennessee, and Connecticut were close behind. States with the lowest vaccinations per capita included Idaho; the contiguous southern states of Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia; and, strange as it might seem, California. Nevada, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Hawaii also were all relatively low on the list. Large states including Texas and Florida currently placed in the middle of the pack.
It’s estimated that vaccinating everyone in the U.S. would require somewhere between 100 and 200 doses per hundred people across each state and territory, which amounts to a total of as many as 660 million doses.
Of course, that remains a huge hypothetical, since, across the world, many people say they intend to decline the vax. In any case, rolling out that many vaccinations represent a considerable logistical challenge, and some states, including the ones where state authorities have clamored for it the most, are experiencing public snafus and accusations of mismanagement of the process.
Still, the U.S. rate of vaccination is currently far outpacing most of the rest of the world, though Israel and the United Arab Emirates top all nations, with 25 and 16 vaccinations per hundred people, respectively.
Overall worldwide rates of vaccinations stand at just 0.49 per hundred people. In general, Europe, including Russia, and large nations including China, Turkey, and Iran are in the average range, with around one vaccination per hundred people. Huge swaths of the planet, including the whole African continent, Australia, and much of South America except for Argentina, have near-zero vaccination rates.
TREND FORECAST: As we have been reporting in the Trends Journal, virtually the entire political and financial sectors have declared that life and business will return to normal when most of the world is vaccinated.
Considering the slow rate of the vaccine rollout, the “recovery” they anticipate will not appear until vaccine rates increase significantly.
