Enough is enough. It’s high time for us to come together and do what we Americans have been doing for generations — solve the problem and win the fight.

For more than a year and a half, we have been battling an invisible enemy. The microscopic coronavirus has been a formidable enemy, and at first all we could do was to guard against it by staying home, avoiding others and cleaning and sanitizing everything in sight.

Now we have real weapons to use in the battle — yet only slightly more than half of all Americans have fully embraced these tools. Those weapons are vaccines, and they have been proven safe and effective. Three versions of the shots received emergency authorization and became available in the United States beginning in December 2020. Now, however, the Pfizer-BioNTech version has the full approval of the Food and Drug Administration for prevention of COVID-19 in people age 16 and older.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 52 percent of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated against this illness; slightly more — about 61 percent — of Americans have received at least one of the two required doses of the Pfizer or Moderna versions of the shot. Those who received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine are considered fully vaccinated.

With this preventive medicine so readily available for free, we can do much better than we are in the fight against the virus. Although case numbers had started to decline in late spring and early summer, COVID-19 is surging again across the nation. The highly contagious delta variant is overwhelming hospitals and intensive care units. Doctors and nurses are reaching their breaking points and pleading with the public to become vaccinated and wear masks.

COVID-19 is once again closing senior centers and other facilities and canceling high school football games and activities. This illness isn’t going to vanish on its own; instead, we must vanquish it, and the best way to do that is to vaccinate a much larger proportion of the population.

If you haven’t yet, do your part and go get the shot.