When news out of Puerto Rico catches the attention of the rest of the United States, too often that news is bad. Whether it’s hurricane damage, a struggling power grid, or a health care system swamped with debt, Puerto Rico seems like … exactly what you would get it you took a small island state and used it to test everyone’s latest pet economic theory, then walked away from the resulting disaster without bothering to chip in even a fraction of what it would take to repair the damage while holding that state to rules no one else has to follow. That’s not this story—this story is good news, news about Puerto Rico leading the nation and providing a lesson all the states that do get representation in Congress should learn. Because, as NPR reported last week, Puerto Rico is outpacing the nation when it comes to vaccination. The highest rate of COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S. is not in a liberal-leaning Northeastern or West Coast state. It's in Puerto Rico, where more than 73% of the total population is fully vaccinated. The U.S. national average is just over 57%. If those numbers seem low, that’s because these are full population, fully vaccinated numbers—the kind of numbers that really measure how well an area is protected against community spread. Those numbers help to explain why if Puerto Rico was listed with the other states, it would be No. 1 not just in vaccination, but it when it comes to the number of cases per population. It’s doing better than Vermont. Better than Hawaii. And it’s still running the lowest rates of cases right now—just 20 cases per 100,000 people over the last week. How did they do it? Exactly the same way that the rest of the nation should be doing it. Read more