17 ms·

If hospitals didn’t overflow and society didn’t crumble for most of 2020 (when there was 0% vaccination), it’s odd to argue that it will now that there is 65% v

If hospitals didn’t overflow and society didn’t crumble for most of 2020 (when there was 0% vaccination), it’s odd to argue that it will now that there is 65% vaccination.

soperj 5y ago
they did, and they are now. Society didn't crumble because of extreme monetary policy measures.
- nostrademons 5y ago
  Arguably society is in the process of crumbling now. Jan 6th was part of that, as were the BLM protests, the anti-vax protests, the contentious school-board meetings, the constant tug-of-war between Federal/state/local/individual authorities, high inflation, supply shortages, people refusing to go back to work, etc.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    Jan 6th affected like .001 percent of the population
    - User23 5y ago
      I have to confess I was never seriously worried that Viking Hat Man was going to overthrow the government and declare himself Shaman-in-Chief, even while I watched that shocking footage live.
      - inlined 5y ago
        But I do think it’s quite possible that Pence would have been killed. Or that we would have a (however minor) constitutional crisis if congress certified an election contrary to the states under duress
        mike00632 5y ago
        Or just think of what would have happened if those quick thinking staffers didn't grab the Electoral College ballots as Congress ran for their lives to the shelter.
        jollybean 5y ago
        It only starts as a 'minor' constitutional crisis. Trump can take to the streets and declare himself president for the next term because the election results were not validated. He can challenge the 'never used' legal procedures in court and of course have his lawyers lie about it in public. They could fire up enough people and get enough momentum so that a few Republicans could be pressured to not vote to validate the election results. If he refused to physically leave the White House - who would make him leave? Imagine if he invited his supporters to 'come to Washington to Defend the President' and they set up camp by the thousands around the WH. And they'd be armed. Is the National Guard going to start shooting? The longer Trump stays there, the more entrenched his legitimacy. Especially if there is violence, it'd really flare tensions. If people believe that the election was stolen, they'd also be hard pressed to be told what the actual, legal procedures are for dealing with a failed vote validation, and so it would be a matter of populism as much as legality. That's how coups happen: enough political, populist, physical force to carry the momentum beyond established legal norms.
        User23 5y ago
        There's no nice way to say this, but you watch too much TV. If you want to know how coup d'etat actually works Luttwak wrote a nice handbook[1]. Needless to say none of those conditions held on January 6th 2021. [1] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737266 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737266
        jollybean 5y ago
        There's no nice way to say this, but the implied definition of a coup from the reference you gave (i.e. generals take over the capitol) is only a very specific form of a coup, and to suggest that political manoeuvring and populist tactics don't form the basis of a coup, is completely wrong. Mussolini's coup, 'March On Rome' [1] is a good reference, but there are plenty of historical examples. Needless to say, the conditions on Jan 6. parallel key elements many historical coups. " The highest-ranking U.S. officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, and other top military leaders made informal plans to stop a coup by former President Donald Trump and his allies in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election," [2] (there are many sources for this). So first, you're at odds with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who likely has an inkling of what was a 'coup' is. Fabricating a constitutional crisis and fomenting mass populist furor is definitely a path to a coup, which he was obviously pursuing. The reason that the VP et. al. reconvened immediately after the Jan 6 riots, directly in the 'still dangerous' aftermath - was because they wanted to make sure that the proceedings were as legitimate as possible, with little deviation from historic and traditional norms thereby minimizing the ability of the former President to create false narrative about it, and reducing his ability to sneak procedural and legal barbs into the process, which is defined by some really vague old laws and is established by tradition and precedent as much as anything. Here are some good historical references, they make for good comparisons [3][4]. I think the chances of him fully taking over were small, but the chances of him mangling up processes and creating a kind of an oddball legal situation which would take many months to resolve while his supporters increased their level of agitation (we saw millions in the streets for BLM, no reason to believe his supporters mightn't have done the same) as a very real possibility. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_on_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_on_Rome [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/15/joint-chiefs-staff-planned-stop-trump-coup-over-election-claims/7975643002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/15/join... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempts_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempt... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempt...
    - OrvalWintermute 5y ago
      .001 percent? 350k? More like 6k to 10k or some number in there.
      - Izkata 5y ago
        .001 percent would be 3.3k, so yes?
  - mleonhard 5y ago
    The tug-of-war between different levels of government is healthy. We should be worried when people stop tugging because they are afraid. The Federal Reserve System and the US Government can bring inflation down to acceptable levels. They will do it after the pandemic. Supply shortages are to be expected given the ongoing disruption to workforces around the world. Some protests produce important progress for society. I think that most of the BLM protests did that. USA is handling the pandemic quite well. Given the country's diversity and massive economic inequality, things worked out better than I expected. Most at-risk folks got vaccinated before the Delta variant hit. The only troubling development is that a large portion of the U.S. population (including some of my family members) showed that they believe that democracy is not important for our country. Specifically, they continue to support politicians who acted against U.S. democracy. I think that most of these people are simply gullible. Many of them are recently-retired and increased their consumption of media. The media companies deftly manipulate them by triggering fear and turning it to anger. Fortunately, these folks still believe that courts are important and they trust the military. They vote, but don't fight. Things will calm down over the next 10 years as the population-age curve flattens. Therefore, society is not crumbling. Laws can and will be changed. Society will progress. USA and our entire species have a bright future.
    - chiefalchemist 5y ago
      The only troubling development is that a large portion of the U.S. population (including some of my family members) showed that they believe that democracy is not important for our country. Can you clarify who and what? My most recent memory of tyranny-esque statements was the President of "the free world" dismissing freedom. Note: I'm not taking political sides. I don't trust either color. But this idea that it's the Reds who are naive is, in the context of the current admin, biased and unfair.
      - mleonhard 5y ago
        > Can you clarify who and what? 147 US Senators and Representatives voted to throw out votes for US President from two states [0, 1]. 8 senators and 59 representatives lied to congress in writing [2]. The outgoing president lied to everyone saying that the election was stolen. > I don't trust either color. But this idea that it's the Reds who are naive is, in the context of the current admin, biased and unfair. My idea is based on my experiences with some of my "red" relatives. Examples: 1. One elderly relative refused the covid vaccine. The reasons they told me include: fear of side-effects, anger about "they're requiring vaccination for everything", and an intention to take hydroxycholorquine and ivermectin as treatments if they become infected. They also claimed that their doctor told them to wait on getting the vaccine "until we have more data on its safety". (Their doctor did not tell them this.) 2. Another elderly relative watches Fox News every day. Half a year after the election, they believed that the outgoing President won re-election and will take office soon. 3. A middle-aged relative believed that masks do not reduce covid transmission. I anticipated the December wave [3] and sent them masks to use during their Thanksgiving holiday travel. They did not use the masks. A few weeks later, their entire family got covid. They all recovered. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/07/us/elections/electoral-college-biden-objectors.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/07/us/elections/... [1] https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2021/01/06 https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2021/01/06 [2] https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2021/01/06/house-section/article/H76-4 https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2021/01/06/hou... [3] https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areasRegional=usga&areasRegional=ustx&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2020-09-01&values=deaths https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areasRegional...
  - soperj 5y ago
    BLM protests were part of society functioning, not crumbling. Police murdering people and getting away with it would be the society crumbling piece.
- throwawayfear 5y ago
  No they didn't, and not they aren't. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hospitalization-numbers-can-be-misleading/620062 https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hos... In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.
  - soperj 5y ago
    then why are hospitals in texas so full that people are having their appendix rupture while they wait for 7 hours to be admitted?
    - unanswered 5y ago
      Because we shut down the economy. This isn't difficult to understand. No economy = no hospital staffing.
    - cfn 5y ago
      I can't speak for Texas but I had a case of appendicitis in the family last year and the main reason for delays wasn't the number of people in the hospital but the new procedures in place. The hospital was nearly empty except for COVID patients and life threatning emergencies. We cancelled 1 million doctor appointments and 300k surgeries in 2020 (in a 10 million population).
      - jollybean 5y ago
        That figure alone is mind-bending and it's odd so many people have difficulty ingesting it. When you have a 'highly contagious disease that kills people with compromised immune systems' (aka the sick and recovering, aka most people in hospitals) - the healthcare system is going to be materially degraded. Each one of those 300 000 surgeries has an impact on someone's life that's not accounted for in the cost of COVID. And that's only for 10M people, it'd be almost 12M surgeries for the US overall if that ratio held. And that's only one of the many disruptions. After all of this has happened, it's really odd to see so many who can't seem to internalize the scope of all of this.
- arc-in-space 5y ago
  What prevented the societal breakdown in countries that didn't do nearly as much QE yet had their hospitals hit equally or worse?
trainsplanes 5y ago
A bunch of hospitals are more strained now than they ever were. Covid's more infectious now and some staff have quit.
- sreque 5y ago
  There have been chronic nursing staff shortages for years. We were treating patients in tents during the 208 flu epidemic: https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie... The much larger problem is that our medical system isn't designed to handle any kind of case surge at all, because, for cost efficiency reasons, it purposely wants to operate at 80-90% capacity. Instead of us focusing on how we can improve our hospital systems for future pandemics, we vilify the unvaccinated for political points. People should be skeptical that hospitals almost never provide thorough or accurate information about their true capacity, constraints, and current cases broken down by primary causes. But at the end of the day, one's views on the situation seem to primarily depend on political identity and whether one blindly trusts the chronically dishonest mainstream media.
  - trainsplanes 5y ago
    > Instead of us focusing on how we can improve our hospital systems for future pandemics, we vilify the unvaccinated for political points. Because globally, yes, they are the cause. Even in countries where hospitals don't run close to max capacity at all times in order to maximize profits, hospitals have been filling up with unvaccinated patients. Japanese hospitals in major cities haven't been able to take in new patients, and those waves of patients are unvaccinated. Although in Japan's case, the problem is there simply aren't enough vaccines here to meet demand. America's problem is there's an overabundance of vaccines but people are going out of their way to get sick, choosing to overwhelm hospitals, and then dying as an act of rebellion for facebook political points.
    - throwawayfear 5y ago
      No, they are not the cause. The vaccinated still spread the virus and could cause it to mutate all the same as the unvaccinated. Also, over 100 million Americans have past covid. [0] And we know that past covid gives antibodies which are superior. [1][2] And the hospitalization situation is overblown. [3] [0] - https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/one-three-americans-already-had-covid-19-end-2020 https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news... A new study published in the journal Nature estimates that 103 million Americans, or 31 percent of the U.S. population, had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by the end of 2020. [1] - https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on... The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label. [2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-covid-prevents-delta-infection-better-than-pfizer-shot https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-... [3] - https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hospitalization-numbers-can-be-misleading/620062 https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hos... In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease. It's entirely possible that media-induced panic is sending people to hospitals over a sniffle, being that half of those hospitalized in 2021 so far may have been admitted for non-covid related reasons or only have mild / asymptomatic covid and still been included in the count. So stop being so interested in finding a scapegoat to blame, because as you can see from other commentary here it'll lead to dehumanization and the creation of a two-tiered society. Which is dangerous.
wwweston 5y ago
It never took that large of a percentage of the population to get sick at once to overwhelm hospital capacity. Some tenths of a percent could probably it. 35% of the population vulnerable means there's plenty of room for that. Enough people do OK w/o interventions that "social collapse" probably wasn't ever going to be the outcome (short of more virulent variants), it's just whether more or fewer of the people for whom treatment makes a difference between life and death (or other morbid outcomes) can get the treatment. Also, there's probably an overlap between those who've received the vaccine and those who were taking other (ie distance-focused) related precautions pre-vaccine. And the possibility of burning out medical workers. And in any case, things in some locations are worse now than they've been thus far: "In Florida, a record number of people are dying from COVID-19—a seven-day average of 338 deaths, higher than at any other point in the pandemic." https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/graphics/graphic-tracking-coronavirus-infections-us https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/graphics/graphic-...
- dukeofdoom 5y ago
  Either the vaccine works or it doesn't. So why are the numbers going up if it's working?
  - bialpio 5y ago
    Way more contagious variant that spreads rapidly among people w/o prior immunity? At least that's what is being theorized based on what happened in the UK (very sharp rise in cases, followed by pretty sharp drop-off, although that seemed to stabilize now). As for the effectiveness of vaccinations, I'm optimistic based on the data from King County, WA: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccination-outcomes.aspx https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccinatio...
    - dukeofdoom 5y ago
      Switch to proportion on the graph. And the number of cases of the fully vaccinated is now around 30%. Still trying to figure out how the unvaccinated can give covid to the vaccinated, if the vaccine is working.
jollybean 5y ago
"If hospitals didn’t overflow and society didn’t crumble for most of 2020 (when there was 0% vaccination), it’s odd to argue that it will now that there is 65% vaccination." 2020 was the worst economic catastrophe in a century. The US Fed printed money in terms it has never before, it's balance sheet has been massively inflated. Government debt exploded to WW2 levels. 10's of millions were unemployed. Most Healthcare systems had to adjust to delay and defer elective procedures. Millions of restaurants and other businesses closed, never to re-open. All of these measures were taken precisely because there were 0% vaccinated. The US/World basically couldn't handle another year of those restrictions, it would probably break the economy and cause a lot of harm. It's not going to be possible to fully re-open until COVID subsides (esp. Delta), vaccinates will be a primary driver of that.

If hospitals didn’t overflow and society didn’t crumble for most of 2020 (when there was 0% vaccination), it’s odd to argue that it will now that there is 65% vaccination.

soperj 5y ago

they did, and they are now. Society didn't crumble because of extreme monetary policy measures.

nostrademons 5y ago
Arguably society is in the process of crumbling now. Jan 6th was part of that, as were the BLM protests, the anti-vax protests, the contentious school-board meetings, the constant tug-of-war between Federal/state/local/individual authorities, high inflation, supply shortages, people refusing to go back to work, etc.
- ryan93 5y ago
  Jan 6th affected like .001 percent of the population
  - User23 5y ago
    I have to confess I was never seriously worried that Viking Hat Man was going to overthrow the government and declare himself Shaman-in-Chief, even while I watched that shocking footage live.
    - inlined 5y ago
      But I do think it’s quite possible that Pence would have been killed. Or that we would have a (however minor) constitutional crisis if congress certified an election contrary to the states under duress
      - mike00632 5y ago
        Or just think of what would have happened if those quick thinking staffers didn't grab the Electoral College ballots as Congress ran for their lives to the shelter.
      - jollybean 5y ago
        It only starts as a 'minor' constitutional crisis. Trump can take to the streets and declare himself president for the next term because the election results were not validated. He can challenge the 'never used' legal procedures in court and of course have his lawyers lie about it in public. They could fire up enough people and get enough momentum so that a few Republicans could be pressured to not vote to validate the election results. If he refused to physically leave the White House - who would make him leave? Imagine if he invited his supporters to 'come to Washington to Defend the President' and they set up camp by the thousands around the WH. And they'd be armed. Is the National Guard going to start shooting? The longer Trump stays there, the more entrenched his legitimacy. Especially if there is violence, it'd really flare tensions. If people believe that the election was stolen, they'd also be hard pressed to be told what the actual, legal procedures are for dealing with a failed vote validation, and so it would be a matter of populism as much as legality. That's how coups happen: enough political, populist, physical force to carry the momentum beyond established legal norms.
        User23 5y ago
        There's no nice way to say this, but you watch too much TV. If you want to know how coup d'etat actually works Luttwak wrote a nice handbook[1]. Needless to say none of those conditions held on January 6th 2021. [1] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737266 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737266
        jollybean 5y ago
        There's no nice way to say this, but the implied definition of a coup from the reference you gave (i.e. generals take over the capitol) is only a very specific form of a coup, and to suggest that political manoeuvring and populist tactics don't form the basis of a coup, is completely wrong. Mussolini's coup, 'March On Rome' [1] is a good reference, but there are plenty of historical examples. Needless to say, the conditions on Jan 6. parallel key elements many historical coups. " The highest-ranking U.S. officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, and other top military leaders made informal plans to stop a coup by former President Donald Trump and his allies in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election," [2] (there are many sources for this). So first, you're at odds with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who likely has an inkling of what was a 'coup' is. Fabricating a constitutional crisis and fomenting mass populist furor is definitely a path to a coup, which he was obviously pursuing. The reason that the VP et. al. reconvened immediately after the Jan 6 riots, directly in the 'still dangerous' aftermath - was because they wanted to make sure that the proceedings were as legitimate as possible, with little deviation from historic and traditional norms thereby minimizing the ability of the former President to create false narrative about it, and reducing his ability to sneak procedural and legal barbs into the process, which is defined by some really vague old laws and is established by tradition and precedent as much as anything. Here are some good historical references, they make for good comparisons [3][4]. I think the chances of him fully taking over were small, but the chances of him mangling up processes and creating a kind of an oddball legal situation which would take many months to resolve while his supporters increased their level of agitation (we saw millions in the streets for BLM, no reason to believe his supporters mightn't have done the same) as a very real possibility. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_on_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_on_Rome [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/15/joint-chiefs-staff-planned-stop-trump-coup-over-election-claims/7975643002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/15/join... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempts_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempt... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempt...
  - OrvalWintermute 5y ago
    .001 percent? 350k? More like 6k to 10k or some number in there.
    - Izkata 5y ago
      .001 percent would be 3.3k, so yes?
- mleonhard 5y ago
  The tug-of-war between different levels of government is healthy. We should be worried when people stop tugging because they are afraid. The Federal Reserve System and the US Government can bring inflation down to acceptable levels. They will do it after the pandemic. Supply shortages are to be expected given the ongoing disruption to workforces around the world. Some protests produce important progress for society. I think that most of the BLM protests did that. USA is handling the pandemic quite well. Given the country's diversity and massive economic inequality, things worked out better than I expected. Most at-risk folks got vaccinated before the Delta variant hit. The only troubling development is that a large portion of the U.S. population (including some of my family members) showed that they believe that democracy is not important for our country. Specifically, they continue to support politicians who acted against U.S. democracy. I think that most of these people are simply gullible. Many of them are recently-retired and increased their consumption of media. The media companies deftly manipulate them by triggering fear and turning it to anger. Fortunately, these folks still believe that courts are important and they trust the military. They vote, but don't fight. Things will calm down over the next 10 years as the population-age curve flattens. Therefore, society is not crumbling. Laws can and will be changed. Society will progress. USA and our entire species have a bright future.
  - chiefalchemist 5y ago
    The only troubling development is that a large portion of the U.S. population (including some of my family members) showed that they believe that democracy is not important for our country. Can you clarify who and what? My most recent memory of tyranny-esque statements was the President of "the free world" dismissing freedom. Note: I'm not taking political sides. I don't trust either color. But this idea that it's the Reds who are naive is, in the context of the current admin, biased and unfair.
    - mleonhard 5y ago
      > Can you clarify who and what? 147 US Senators and Representatives voted to throw out votes for US President from two states [0, 1]. 8 senators and 59 representatives lied to congress in writing [2]. The outgoing president lied to everyone saying that the election was stolen. > I don't trust either color. But this idea that it's the Reds who are naive is, in the context of the current admin, biased and unfair. My idea is based on my experiences with some of my "red" relatives. Examples: 1. One elderly relative refused the covid vaccine. The reasons they told me include: fear of side-effects, anger about "they're requiring vaccination for everything", and an intention to take hydroxycholorquine and ivermectin as treatments if they become infected. They also claimed that their doctor told them to wait on getting the vaccine "until we have more data on its safety". (Their doctor did not tell them this.) 2. Another elderly relative watches Fox News every day. Half a year after the election, they believed that the outgoing President won re-election and will take office soon. 3. A middle-aged relative believed that masks do not reduce covid transmission. I anticipated the December wave [3] and sent them masks to use during their Thanksgiving holiday travel. They did not use the masks. A few weeks later, their entire family got covid. They all recovered. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/07/us/elections/electoral-college-biden-objectors.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/07/us/elections/... [1] https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2021/01/06 https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2021/01/06 [2] https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2021/01/06/house-section/article/H76-4 https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2021/01/06/hou... [3] https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areasRegional=usga&areasRegional=ustx&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2020-09-01&values=deaths https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areasRegional...
- soperj 5y ago
  BLM protests were part of society functioning, not crumbling. Police murdering people and getting away with it would be the society crumbling piece.
throwawayfear 5y ago
No they didn't, and not they aren't. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hospitalization-numbers-can-be-misleading/620062 https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hos... In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.
- soperj 5y ago
  then why are hospitals in texas so full that people are having their appendix rupture while they wait for 7 hours to be admitted?
  - unanswered 5y ago
    Because we shut down the economy. This isn't difficult to understand. No economy = no hospital staffing.
  - cfn 5y ago
    I can't speak for Texas but I had a case of appendicitis in the family last year and the main reason for delays wasn't the number of people in the hospital but the new procedures in place. The hospital was nearly empty except for COVID patients and life threatning emergencies. We cancelled 1 million doctor appointments and 300k surgeries in 2020 (in a 10 million population).
    - jollybean 5y ago
      That figure alone is mind-bending and it's odd so many people have difficulty ingesting it. When you have a 'highly contagious disease that kills people with compromised immune systems' (aka the sick and recovering, aka most people in hospitals) - the healthcare system is going to be materially degraded. Each one of those 300 000 surgeries has an impact on someone's life that's not accounted for in the cost of COVID. And that's only for 10M people, it'd be almost 12M surgeries for the US overall if that ratio held. And that's only one of the many disruptions. After all of this has happened, it's really odd to see so many who can't seem to internalize the scope of all of this.
arc-in-space 5y ago
What prevented the societal breakdown in countries that didn't do nearly as much QE yet had their hospitals hit equally or worse?

trainsplanes 5y ago

A bunch of hospitals are more strained now than they ever were. Covid's more infectious now and some staff have quit.

sreque 5y ago
There have been chronic nursing staff shortages for years. We were treating patients in tents during the 208 flu epidemic: https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie... The much larger problem is that our medical system isn't designed to handle any kind of case surge at all, because, for cost efficiency reasons, it purposely wants to operate at 80-90% capacity. Instead of us focusing on how we can improve our hospital systems for future pandemics, we vilify the unvaccinated for political points. People should be skeptical that hospitals almost never provide thorough or accurate information about their true capacity, constraints, and current cases broken down by primary causes. But at the end of the day, one's views on the situation seem to primarily depend on political identity and whether one blindly trusts the chronically dishonest mainstream media.
- trainsplanes 5y ago
  > Instead of us focusing on how we can improve our hospital systems for future pandemics, we vilify the unvaccinated for political points. Because globally, yes, they are the cause. Even in countries where hospitals don't run close to max capacity at all times in order to maximize profits, hospitals have been filling up with unvaccinated patients. Japanese hospitals in major cities haven't been able to take in new patients, and those waves of patients are unvaccinated. Although in Japan's case, the problem is there simply aren't enough vaccines here to meet demand. America's problem is there's an overabundance of vaccines but people are going out of their way to get sick, choosing to overwhelm hospitals, and then dying as an act of rebellion for facebook political points.
  - throwawayfear 5y ago
    No, they are not the cause. The vaccinated still spread the virus and could cause it to mutate all the same as the unvaccinated. Also, over 100 million Americans have past covid. [0] And we know that past covid gives antibodies which are superior. [1][2] And the hospitalization situation is overblown. [3] [0] - https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/one-three-americans-already-had-covid-19-end-2020 https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news... A new study published in the journal Nature estimates that 103 million Americans, or 31 percent of the U.S. population, had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by the end of 2020. [1] - https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on... The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label. [2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-covid-prevents-delta-infection-better-than-pfizer-shot https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-... [3] - https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hospitalization-numbers-can-be-misleading/620062 https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hos... In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease. It's entirely possible that media-induced panic is sending people to hospitals over a sniffle, being that half of those hospitalized in 2021 so far may have been admitted for non-covid related reasons or only have mild / asymptomatic covid and still been included in the count. So stop being so interested in finding a scapegoat to blame, because as you can see from other commentary here it'll lead to dehumanization and the creation of a two-tiered society. Which is dangerous.

wwweston 5y ago

It never took that large of a percentage of the population to get sick at once to overwhelm hospital capacity. Some tenths of a percent could probably it. 35% of the population vulnerable means there's plenty of room for that. Enough people do OK w/o interventions that "social collapse" probably wasn't ever going to be the outcome (short of more virulent variants), it's just whether more or fewer of the people for whom treatment makes a difference between life and death (or other morbid outcomes) can get the treatment. Also, there's probably an overlap between those who've received the vaccine and those who were taking other (ie distance-focused) related precautions pre-vaccine. And the possibility of burning out medical workers. And in any case, things in some locations are worse now than they've been thus far: "In Florida, a record number of people are dying from COVID-19—a seven-day average of 338 deaths, higher than at any other point in the pandemic." https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/graphics/graphic-tracking-coronavirus-infections-us https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/graphics/graphic-...

dukeofdoom 5y ago
Either the vaccine works or it doesn't. So why are the numbers going up if it's working?
- bialpio 5y ago
  Way more contagious variant that spreads rapidly among people w/o prior immunity? At least that's what is being theorized based on what happened in the UK (very sharp rise in cases, followed by pretty sharp drop-off, although that seemed to stabilize now). As for the effectiveness of vaccinations, I'm optimistic based on the data from King County, WA: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccination-outcomes.aspx https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccinatio...
  - dukeofdoom 5y ago
    Switch to proportion on the graph. And the number of cases of the fully vaccinated is now around 30%. Still trying to figure out how the unvaccinated can give covid to the vaccinated, if the vaccine is working.

jollybean 5y ago

"If hospitals didn’t overflow and society didn’t crumble for most of 2020 (when there was 0% vaccination), it’s odd to argue that it will now that there is 65% vaccination." 2020 was the worst economic catastrophe in a century. The US Fed printed money in terms it has never before, it's balance sheet has been massively inflated. Government debt exploded to WW2 levels. 10's of millions were unemployed. Most Healthcare systems had to adjust to delay and defer elective procedures. Millions of restaurants and other businesses closed, never to re-open. All of these measures were taken precisely because there were 0% vaccinated. The US/World basically couldn't handle another year of those restrictions, it would probably break the economy and cause a lot of harm. It's not going to be possible to fully re-open until COVID subsides (esp. Delta), vaccinates will be a primary driver of that.