As Virus Cases Rise, Another Contagion Spreads Among the Vaccinated: Anger - The New York Times

Now many of the vaccinated fear for their unvaccinated children and worry that they are at risk themselves for breakthrough infections.

“It’s like the sun has come up in the morning and everyone is arguing about it,” said Jim Taylor, 66, a retired civil servant in Baton Rouge, La., a state in which fewer than half of adults are fully vaccinated.

“I’ve become angrier as time has gone on,” said Doug Robertson, 39, a teacher who lives outside Portland, Ore., and has three children too young to be vaccinated, including a toddler with a serious health condition.

On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City ordered that all municipal workers be vaccinated against Covid-19 by the time schools reopen in mid-September or face weekly testing.

Officials in California followed suit hours later with a similar mandate covering all state employees and health care workers.

The Department of Veterans Affairs on Monday required that 115,000 on-site health care workers be vaccinated in the next two months, the first federal agency to order a mandate.

Nearly 60 major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association, on Monday called for mandatory vaccination of all health care workers.

According to a database maintained by The New York Times, 57 percent of Americans ages 12 and older are fully vaccinated.

Communities from San Francisco to Austin, Texas, are recommending that vaccinated people wear masks again in public indoor settings.

For many Americans who were vaccinated months ago, the future is beginning to look grim.

Josh Perldeiner, 36, a public defender in Connecticut who has a 2-year-old son, was fully vaccinated by mid-May.

“People with privilege are refusing the vaccine, and it’s affecting our economy and perpetuating the cycle.” As infections rise, he added, “I feel like we’re at that same precipice as just a year ago, where people don’t care if more people die.”.

“The longer that we’re not getting toward that number, the more it feels like there’s a decent percentage of the population that honestly doesn’t care about us as health care workers,” Ms.

As the number of infections increases, these settings, too, have seen tension rise between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

As the virus begins to spread again, some vaccinated people believe the federal government should start using sticks rather than carrots, like lottery tickets.

“I feel we have a social contract in this country with our neighbors, and people who can get vaccinated and choose not to get vaccinated are breaking it,” Ms.

Maybe the federal government should require employees and contractors to be vaccinated, he mused.

Gentle persuasion and persistent prodding convinced Dorrett Denton, a 62-year-old home health aide in Queens, to be vaccinated in February.