The Southern States' Vaccine Reluctance

 Call it vaccine hesitance, call it reluctance, call it whatever you want, but it's painfully obvious that the southern states are lagging the rest of the country (and especially the northeast and west) when it comes to getting vaccinated for COVID-19. Because the CDC only reports vaccines actually administered, and not whether they're first doses, I assembled my own map of first doses by state:

The southern states particularly are doing poorly, in the main:

Outside of Virginia, no southern state is even at 50% of the population yet, and many are below 40%. This means there will likely be another wave of infections, albeit deaths will be limited because of greater vaccine uptake among older groups, even there. The CDC reports that more than 80% of Americans 65 and up have been vaccinated, though without individual state reporting on age demographics, there could be large regional holes.