The simplest explanation for the Delta surge is still the best one

How extreme contagiousness explains much of what we're seeing around the country

A woman wearing a mask.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

As the Delta variant continues to sweep through countries around the world, including countries like Australia that were once poster children for a zero-COVID strategy, it's understandable that anxiety is on the rise. Is vaccine effectiveness waning so fast that we'll all need booster shots? Is Delta more dangerous to younger people? Do we all need to go back into lockdown? And the flip side to anxiety is fatalism: If vaccine effectiveness fades so fast, why bother getting the shot in the first place?

At times like these, it's useful to take refuge in an old standby: Occam's Razor.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Noah Millman

Noah Millman is a screenwriter and filmmaker, a political columnist and a critic. From 2012 through 2017 he was a senior editor and featured blogger at The American Conservative. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Politico, USA Today, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Policy, Modern Age, First Things, and the Jewish Review of Books, among other publications. Noah lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.