The goal of President Biden of having 70-percent of adults in the U.S. with at least one shot of the COVID vaccine by the 4th of July was almost met.
The Centers for Disease Control saying it was 67 percent. But there were more than a dozen states that made that 70-percent goal including California, as well as New York and Illinois.
But a smaller state, West Virginia, that was applauded early on for its vaccination rate, fell way short and the state’s Republican Governor sounded an ominous alarm over the weekend.
West Virginia Governor Jim Justice told ABC News on Sunday that those who are still unvaccinated against COVID-19 will be pushed to get the shot only by a “catastrophe” in which “an awful lot of people die.”
The governor said that while his state has been holding lotteries, just like California and some other states, with West Virginia giving away prizes of cash, and even guns to people who get vaccinated, he said another lottery is happening in his state in which people are gambling with their lives. He called it “a death lottery.”
His unsettling comment follows the CDC’s announcement that 99.5 percent of deaths from COVID-19 in the last several months have been among only unvaccinated people.
So the push to vaccinate continues, and using a familiar saying, the West Virginia Governor put the challenge this way:
"Maybe what you got to do is lead them to water -- and then if they won't drink -- you've got to just, some way, stand up and push their head down to some way -- at least a few will drink," Justice responded. "And that's what we got to do."
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