this delta variant wave of covid-19 from shutting down our small businesses, our schools and our society. you know, when we first got to office, covid-19 crisis and economic crisises with unrelentless and devastating for people. as a nation we didn t have the tools to deal with either. nearly 4,000 americans were dying each and every day through the virus. 4,000 a day. the economy had been wiped out. we were down 10 million jobs from where we were before the pandemic. we were in a dark winter. with real concerns about what spring would bring. but then we got to work. we passed the american rescue plan sharortly after i was swor in and rebuild our economy and produced results. to beat the pandemic, we ramped up testing and protected equipment and we brought we
not disappeared and so that is one problem. and the other issue and is very important is how inefficient governments are in spending the money they ve allocated and the president himself made the point about the rental money not getting out to people fast enough. we ve already seen at the state and local level, it fell well short of expectations. we had a contraction in state and local spending despite all of the transfers that the president listed because it is not been spent yet, that will take some time. and i think that is a part that people sort of forget about, is how long it takes for governments to actually ramp up these projects and ramp up even things that should take less time, they cannot get it out of the door fast enough and i think that is one of the challenges. another issue really important is broadband. we re talking about infrastructure. but if we want to really reach those who have been most disenfranchised in this pandemic, those who do not have access to broadband
we ll be able to deal with than the one that we was underway when i took office. and, yes, cases are going to go up before they come back down. it is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. i know i ve said that constantly and others have as well. the vaccination of the unvaccinated. and it is needless taking taking a needless toll on our country. you know, we have roughly 350 million people vaccinated in the united states. and billions around the world, and virtually no one has died because of that vaccination. ine so the impact is different than last january. today about 400 people will die because of the delta variant in this country. a tragedy. because virtually all of deaths are preventible if people had gotten vaccinated. seven months ago today, almost
at this point, i m sorry, it s getting to the place where it is coming down to almost a binary choice, which is protect students with masks and lose funding potentially, or don t protect kids and keep school funding. that s an that choice just plain and simply sucks, but what do you do if that s the choice you have? those are book-ends that should not be acceptable in any setting and i am still hopeful that cooler heads will prevail, particularly miami-dade, the fourth largest school system in america, navigated a pandemic over the past year in a half in a solid way and hope to continue to do so. we have a good working relationship with the commission of education, with the governor s office and we want to take advantage of any available flexibility that would result in protective measures that simultaneously allow the full funding of public schools. and that is why we ll continue to follow our process. we have one advantage in miami-dade. we are the last school system
economic recovery. we all know what it starts with. and i said it again and again, this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. so we have to get more people vaccinated. i said, well over what is the number again, i have to remind me self-. 350 million americans have been vaccinated. they re doing fine. i m pleased to report that the past week we ve seen the first time vaccinations in america go up by 4 million people getting 4 million shots. that is more than we ve seen in a long time. want to thank the governors, i listen to the governor of maryland today on the television. he s doing a heck of a job. democratic governors as well. republican governors. they re getting the word out. look, as you all know, i put in place new incentives and