All the COVID-19 numbers are going up in Chicago... except the numbers of those vaccinated

A screenshot of today's City of Chicago COVID Dashboard:

This information does not mean much in a vacuum. Compare the City COVID-19 Dashboard as of July 17:

And compare also with this snapshot of the COVID-19 Dashboard from July 10, just two weeks ago:

The "daily average" of COVID-19 cases today -- 130 -- may not look so bad. Things were much worse last October or November. But today's daily average compares rather unfavorably with last week's daily average (70) or the average from two weeks ago (41). A positivity rate of 2.2% seems unthreatening enough. But... two weeks ago it was .9%... last week it was 1.2%.

But hey! Lollapalooza starts Thursday. Yippee!

Deaths are down this week -- .57 a day -- down from one a day a week ago -- but daily average hospitalizations are up (7.33 as of July 24, compared to 5.33 as of July 17 and 4.50 as of July 10) -- and, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, death rates tend to lag a bit behind increasing hospitalization rates.

But here is the figure that is perhaps most frightening: As of July 24 only 51.7% of Chicagoans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Only 57.7% have taken a single dose. Last week those numbers were 51.1% and 57.1%. Two weeks ago they were 50.5% and 56.5%. Why aren't these numbers growing faster?

Vaccines are plentiful -- it's not March anymore -- and they're free. Every public official at every level, high and low, is urging anyone and everyone to get their shots ASAP. And has been now for weeks and weeks. So... why isn't everyone around here vaccinated?

We are told, repeatedly, that Democratic voters are vaccinated and only knuckle-dragging Republican Neanderthals are not.

And, certainly, there is at least some anecdotal evidence to support the notion that recalcitrant Republicans are lagging behind their more-enlightened Democratic fellow citizens. So it seems safe to conclude that this must be part of the explanation.

But---c'mon people---does anyone really think that 49% of the population of the City of Chicago are Fox-News-viewing, Trump-supporting yahoos?

Vaccine hesitancy can not be explained away by Red vs. Blue alone. Not in Chicago. Not in Cook County. Harping on this one explanation is preventing us from getting at the real root causes. We have to put aside this eternal partisan posturing and start asking why vaccine hesitancy is so widespread here. Unless, of course, you like the idea of returning to lockdown.