7 ms·

Yes because no effort was made to increase ICU capacity which was continues to be the biggest issue

fabian2k 5y ago
No, that isn't the biggest issue. The ICU is the last resort, it's the point where we throw incredible amounts of effort and hardware at the problem to gain a chance of still saving them. And even then 50% still die, and others likely will have permanent damage from the severe course of the disease. The biggest issue is that not enough people got vaccinated.
- throwntoday 5y ago
  Vaccinated are still being hospitalized. How much longer will you buy into the narrative that they are not when so many countries are showing evidence to the contrary.
  - fabian2k 5y ago
    Vaccines reduce severe courses of the disease by about 90%. The number vary depending on what you look at exactly, and for elderly people boosters are really mandatory to keep the vaccine effective. Reducing the number of severe cases by a factor of 10 is very from from not working.
  - the_why_of_y 5y ago
    That's like saying, people are still hospitalized after car crashes so seatbelts and airbags are useless.
    - harambae 5y ago
      The safety of modern cars has been shown to lead to more aggressive driving, so this metaphor may track on more levels than you realize.
  - mthoms 5y ago
    >Vaccinated are still being hospitalized. How much longer will you buy into the narrative that they are not when so many countries are showing evidence to the contrary. What "narrative"? What are you even talking about? No-one, including the person you responded to, has claimed that vaccinated people can't get sick. The claim (backed by statistics) is that the unvaccinated are being hospitalized at a much higher rate and for a much longer duration. You're arguing a point that no-one is disagreeing with.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      True, unvaccinated people are being hospitalized at a higher rate and for a longer duration. However, we are not talking about "the unvaccinated", rather about "a tiny unfortunate fraction of unvaccinated people". There are 4,690 covid patients in ICU beds and 25M unvaccinated people. Assuming all covid ICU patients are unvaccinated, the covid ICU incidence rate within the unvaccinated population is 0.02%. For an analogy, we could reason that because the prison population skews 90/10 male/female, all males should either undergo a vasectomy, or pay a recurring 10k euro fine. I hope this is obviously unethical.
      - Klemotio 5y ago
        Your prison thing is widely weird and not sure at all how you relate those two.things. Yes the point is to make sure that those ICU capacity which is very small and normally enough would and is struggling due to covid and vaccination helps. What is so hard to understand?
        angelzen 5y ago
        Vaccine mandates enforced by heavy fines and/or prison are criminalizing being unvaccinated with the number of "boosters" the authorities deem necessary. Justified by group "crime" statistic differentials. We may argue that it is done in service of a good cause, but it is still criminalizing. Our weird reality.
        5y ago
  - yibg 5y ago
    People wearing seatbelts still die in car crashes. When will you stop buying into the narrative that seatbelts saves lives?
  - m4rtink 5y ago
    When all houses have sprinklers only sprinkler equipped houses will burn down. Still in absolute numbers there should be much less fires.
    - refurb 5y ago
      Right, but the point is you still need more ICU capacity. The analogy is “every house has sprinklers so no need for a fire department any more”.
      - kelnos 5y ago
        Do you, though? I see lots of numbers around hospitalizations, but how many (vaccinated) people hospitalized end up in the ICU?
        m4rtink 5y ago
        From all the local reporting the overwhelming majority of people in Czech ICU are not vaccinated. A few examples - listing from a hard-case ICU in Ostrava for a week in November: https://mobile.twitter.com/VojtechGibis/status/1463608271378558981 https://mobile.twitter.com/VojtechGibis/status/1463608271378... NEOČKOVÁN - not vaccinated OČKOVÁN - vaccinated The last 5 patients are those that have been released from the unit in that week. The first two were move to less severe case ICU. The last three died... One more: https://mobile.twitter.com/VojtechGibis/status/1465783542982619140 https://mobile.twitter.com/VojtechGibis/status/1465783542982... Czech ICU occupancy - blue unvaccinated, orange vaccinated. And yes, we had several cases <30 years old and unfortunately even children on ICU.
        refurb 5y ago
        Singapore does a great job of testing and the vaccination rate is >95% for the eligible population. Despite that, they have introduced restrictions due to ICU overload. https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19/statistics https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19/statistics Look at "Proportion (%) of cases ever critically ill in ICU or died, by age and vaccination status" Looking at the high risk group of 80+ year old (43% of all ICU cases and/or deaths), the numbers are: unvaccinated (24%), partially vaccinated (16%) and fully vaccinated (3.2%). They don't define partially vaccinated (typically 14 days after 2nd dose). So clearly the vaccine reduces the risk of ICU/death, but the "truly" unvaccinated make up only 50% of ICU cases in that age group.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    Sure, but how many vaccinated people are ending up in the ICU, compared to unvaccinated? How many are dying? Also consider that a population of 100, and 90 of those people are vaccinated. Uf 15 vaccinated people end up in the hospital, and 5 unvaccinated people also end up in the hospital, vaccination is still clearly better for you. But people will still say "75% of the people in the hospital were vaccinated; clearly the vaccines aren't working!" Yeah, well, out of vaccinated people, only 16% ended up hospitalized, while 50% of unvaccinated people ended up hospitalized. Those are the real numbers that matter. Percent of cohort hospitalized, not percent of total hospitalized.
  - dang 5y ago
    Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we ban that sort of account. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  ICU itself causes massive damage too. Side effect like died of hands and feet are not uncommon.
the_why_of_y 5y ago
Training an ICU nurse takes about 5 years. The only realistic option during the pandemic would be to encourage immigration of ICU nurses from poorer countries, but that just moves the problem elsewhere.
- throwntoday 5y ago
  5 years of training didn't stop these trained nurses from blowing up people's lungs on ventilators early on.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  I have a suspicion that ICU training for a COVID specific nurse could be much shorter - if there were any will or basic common fucking sense among policy makers, and if there were fewer people making excuses for those who ghoulishly and cynically privatized healthcare for profit across the Western world.
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    A "COVID specific nurse" still needs the entire slate of training that goes with respiratory disease, inflammatory disease, etc, and all the secondary complications that come from those.
    - mandmandam 5y ago
      Then train 3 nurses in respiratory disease, inflammatory disease, and secondary complications separately. Put them under an experienced nurse, and incentivize them to add to their skills when they're not working. Look at the sheer difference in numbers of healthcare professionals between America and Cuba. If they can do it even after decades of cruel and unusual sanctions, we sure as fuck can too.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - m4rtink 5y ago

No, that isn't the biggest issue. The ICU is the last resort, it's the point where we throw incredible amounts of effort and hardware at the problem to gain a chance of still saving them. And even then 50% still die, and others likely will have permanent damage from the severe course of the disease. The biggest issue is that not enough people got vaccinated.

throwntoday 5y ago
Vaccinated are still being hospitalized. How much longer will you buy into the narrative that they are not when so many countries are showing evidence to the contrary.
- fabian2k 5y ago
  Vaccines reduce severe courses of the disease by about 90%. The number vary depending on what you look at exactly, and for elderly people boosters are really mandatory to keep the vaccine effective. Reducing the number of severe cases by a factor of 10 is very from from not working.
- the_why_of_y 5y ago
  That's like saying, people are still hospitalized after car crashes so seatbelts and airbags are useless.
  - harambae 5y ago
    The safety of modern cars has been shown to lead to more aggressive driving, so this metaphor may track on more levels than you realize.
- mthoms 5y ago
  >Vaccinated are still being hospitalized. How much longer will you buy into the narrative that they are not when so many countries are showing evidence to the contrary. What "narrative"? What are you even talking about? No-one, including the person you responded to, has claimed that vaccinated people can't get sick. The claim (backed by statistics) is that the unvaccinated are being hospitalized at a much higher rate and for a much longer duration. You're arguing a point that no-one is disagreeing with.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    True, unvaccinated people are being hospitalized at a higher rate and for a longer duration. However, we are not talking about "the unvaccinated", rather about "a tiny unfortunate fraction of unvaccinated people". There are 4,690 covid patients in ICU beds and 25M unvaccinated people. Assuming all covid ICU patients are unvaccinated, the covid ICU incidence rate within the unvaccinated population is 0.02%. For an analogy, we could reason that because the prison population skews 90/10 male/female, all males should either undergo a vasectomy, or pay a recurring 10k euro fine. I hope this is obviously unethical.
    - Klemotio 5y ago
      Your prison thing is widely weird and not sure at all how you relate those two.things. Yes the point is to make sure that those ICU capacity which is very small and normally enough would and is struggling due to covid and vaccination helps. What is so hard to understand?
      - angelzen 5y ago
        Vaccine mandates enforced by heavy fines and/or prison are criminalizing being unvaccinated with the number of "boosters" the authorities deem necessary. Justified by group "crime" statistic differentials. We may argue that it is done in service of a good cause, but it is still criminalizing. Our weird reality.
        5y ago
- yibg 5y ago
  People wearing seatbelts still die in car crashes. When will you stop buying into the narrative that seatbelts saves lives?
- m4rtink 5y ago
  When all houses have sprinklers only sprinkler equipped houses will burn down. Still in absolute numbers there should be much less fires.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Right, but the point is you still need more ICU capacity. The analogy is “every house has sprinklers so no need for a fire department any more”.
    - kelnos 5y ago
      Do you, though? I see lots of numbers around hospitalizations, but how many (vaccinated) people hospitalized end up in the ICU?
      - m4rtink 5y ago
        From all the local reporting the overwhelming majority of people in Czech ICU are not vaccinated. A few examples - listing from a hard-case ICU in Ostrava for a week in November: https://mobile.twitter.com/VojtechGibis/status/1463608271378558981 https://mobile.twitter.com/VojtechGibis/status/1463608271378... NEOČKOVÁN - not vaccinated OČKOVÁN - vaccinated The last 5 patients are those that have been released from the unit in that week. The first two were move to less severe case ICU. The last three died... One more: https://mobile.twitter.com/VojtechGibis/status/1465783542982619140 https://mobile.twitter.com/VojtechGibis/status/1465783542982... Czech ICU occupancy - blue unvaccinated, orange vaccinated. And yes, we had several cases <30 years old and unfortunately even children on ICU.
      - refurb 5y ago
        Singapore does a great job of testing and the vaccination rate is >95% for the eligible population. Despite that, they have introduced restrictions due to ICU overload. https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19/statistics https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19/statistics Look at "Proportion (%) of cases ever critically ill in ICU or died, by age and vaccination status" Looking at the high risk group of 80+ year old (43% of all ICU cases and/or deaths), the numbers are: unvaccinated (24%), partially vaccinated (16%) and fully vaccinated (3.2%). They don't define partially vaccinated (typically 14 days after 2nd dose). So clearly the vaccine reduces the risk of ICU/death, but the "truly" unvaccinated make up only 50% of ICU cases in that age group.
- kelnos 5y ago
  Sure, but how many vaccinated people are ending up in the ICU, compared to unvaccinated? How many are dying? Also consider that a population of 100, and 90 of those people are vaccinated. Uf 15 vaccinated people end up in the hospital, and 5 unvaccinated people also end up in the hospital, vaccination is still clearly better for you. But people will still say "75% of the people in the hospital were vaccinated; clearly the vaccines aren't working!" Yeah, well, out of vaccinated people, only 16% ended up hospitalized, while 50% of unvaccinated people ended up hospitalized. Those are the real numbers that matter. Percent of cohort hospitalized, not percent of total hospitalized.
- dang 5y ago
  Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we ban that sort of account. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
raxxorrax 5y ago
ICU itself causes massive damage too. Side effect like died of hands and feet are not uncommon.

the_why_of_y 5y ago

Training an ICU nurse takes about 5 years. The only realistic option during the pandemic would be to encourage immigration of ICU nurses from poorer countries, but that just moves the problem elsewhere.

throwntoday 5y ago
5 years of training didn't stop these trained nurses from blowing up people's lungs on ventilators early on.
mandmandam 5y ago
I have a suspicion that ICU training for a COVID specific nurse could be much shorter - if there were any will or basic common fucking sense among policy makers, and if there were fewer people making excuses for those who ghoulishly and cynically privatized healthcare for profit across the Western world.
- crooked-v 5y ago
  A "COVID specific nurse" still needs the entire slate of training that goes with respiratory disease, inflammatory disease, etc, and all the secondary complications that come from those.
  - mandmandam 5y ago
    Then train 3 nurses in respiratory disease, inflammatory disease, and secondary complications separately. Put them under an experienced nurse, and incentivize them to add to their skills when they're not working. Look at the sheer difference in numbers of healthcare professionals between America and Cuba. If they can do it even after decades of cruel and unusual sanctions, we sure as fuck can too.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- m4rtink 5y ago