Yesterday, we delved into the issue of the Delta variant as daily COVID cases reported in the US ticked higher after touching their lowest levels since the start of the pandemic. The data set off another round of warnings about the relatively large swath of Americans who refuse to get the vaccine.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg published the latest in a series of stories effectively re-stating the same facts: the vaccination rate in a handful of deep-red states has substantially lagged the rate in the rest of the country. The lead-in for Wednesday's story was the fact that the gap between the most- and least-vaccinated states has continued to widen. Though even Bloomberg concedes that "on a national level, the news appears good...the country's vaccination campaign is among the most successful in the world..."

One academic quoted in the Bloomberg story, Timothy Callaghan, who studies rural health at Texas A&M, warned that "we're going to have counties where vaccination is rare and nowhere close to herd immunity, and others where it's high. We could be headed toward a divided country of haves and have nots."

They also warned that an analysis last week of COVID cases in 700 counties found that the new delta variant first identified in India (which, according to Bloomberg, is "far more contagious") has been found more often in less-vaccinated US counties.

But is the Delta variant really "far more contagious" than earlier iterations of SARS-CoV-2?

In a recent piece published by the Blaze, writer Daniel Horowitz explains that the existing data suggests Delta isn't any deadlier or more infectious than other strains. Horowitz described the warnings from epidemiologists and public health bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci as "panic porn dressed up as science."