The New York Times reports:

Officials in Louisiana have been willing to try just about anything to jolt the state’s lagging Covid-19 vaccination rates, from a $1 million cash giveaway to a public service announcement featuring the recent 14-year-old national spelling bee champion.

But when Madeline LeBlanc relented and got her first vaccine dose this week, she was motivated by something entirely different: fear.

After seeing news reports about the Delta variant raging across the state, Ms. LeBlanc, 24, had come to see that without a vaccine, she risked not just her own life but those of others around her. “I don’t want to be the one inhibiting someone else’s health,” said Ms. LeBlanc, who lives in Baton Rouge.

Demand for the shots has nearly quadrupled in recent weeks in Louisiana, a promising glimmer that the deadly reality of the virus might be breaking through a logjam of misunderstanding and misinformation.

The new push for vaccinations has been driven by an explosion in coronavirus cases. But it takes time for vaccines to bolster immune systems, and the state — which now leads the country in new cases — could still be weeks away from relief.

Hospitals are overflowing with more Covid-19 patients than ever before. Even children’s hospitals have packed intensive care units. And the Delta variant has alarmed doctors, who described seeing patients in their 20s and 30s rapidly declining and dying.

“These are the darkest days of our pandemic,” said Dr. Catherine O’Neal, the chief medical officer at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge.

The Delta variant has unleashed a rush of diagnoses across the United States, but Louisiana has emerged as a troublesome hot spot, with the highest per capita rate of cases in the country and a beleaguered health care system straining to keep up. [Continue reading…]