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What it will do is that when those people who haven't got the shots start to be sick, they will throw their beliefs in the bin and go to the hospital. They will

What it will do is that when those people who haven't got the shots start to be sick, they will throw their beliefs in the bin and go to the hospital. They will stretch the capacity and then when I need to go for an ailment different from this disease, I'll be queued up behind them and the treatment I get would be subpar. Disclaimer: I don't have the stats on hospitalization rates/capacity in places that have low rates of vaccination but high rates of infection.

imgabe 5y ago
That is a concern, and I think we need to be much louder and angrier about why, 2 years into a pandemic, we still haven’t built up additional hospital capacity that we know we need. There are also other treatments that we know greatly reduce the severity (and thus would decrease the need for hospital capacity) that haven’t been rolled out as widely and aggressively as the vaccine has.
- toast0 5y ago
  > we need to be much louder and angrier about why, 2 years into a pandemic, we still haven’t built up additional hospital capacity that we know we need. Hospital capacity limits are mostly about personnel and not equipment/space. Equipment and space are issues too, but temporary measures are possible. Everywhere is having trouble hiring because employers don't want to pay enough wages for people to do the work. The same is true in the healthcare setting, but nursing requires a significant amount of training (AFAIK, 2 years for entry level nursing, I think more time needed for ICU nursing) and doctoring is even more. Hospitals (and healthcare providers in general) are not incentivized to retain enough staff to deal with spikes in demand. AFAIK, there hasn't been increased training, and probably a lot of training was delayed while in-person education wasn't an option. Healthcare workers were also a lot of the early victims. COVID mitigation measures probably reduce healthcare productivity too, requiring even more workers.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
raxxorrax 5y ago
Not enough ICU (too late when you get there anyway) is a political problem. In my country they reduced it with state funding (you got money for reducing beds, active monetary incentives) and now they ponder about vaccination mandates. This is infantile blaming of others in my opinion. Worse, you don't even hold those that are really responsible to account. So my sympathy if you fail to get an ICU is limited.
- noisy_boy 5y ago
  It is not practical to have hospitals to cater to extreme spikes - it takes trained doctors, nurses, infrastructure to run all which is in limited supply. Further, even if that can be managed, during normal periods, all that excess capacity wouldn't maintain itself. You need a balance of additional capacity and responsible behaviour supported by science/medicine/evidence. Ignoring that is infantile.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    True, but that was a policy in the last summer and now non-vaccinated people are blamed. This does not match.

imgabe 5y ago

That is a concern, and I think we need to be much louder and angrier about why, 2 years into a pandemic, we still haven’t built up additional hospital capacity that we know we need. There are also other treatments that we know greatly reduce the severity (and thus would decrease the need for hospital capacity) that haven’t been rolled out as widely and aggressively as the vaccine has.

toast0 5y ago
> we need to be much louder and angrier about why, 2 years into a pandemic, we still haven’t built up additional hospital capacity that we know we need. Hospital capacity limits are mostly about personnel and not equipment/space. Equipment and space are issues too, but temporary measures are possible. Everywhere is having trouble hiring because employers don't want to pay enough wages for people to do the work. The same is true in the healthcare setting, but nursing requires a significant amount of training (AFAIK, 2 years for entry level nursing, I think more time needed for ICU nursing) and doctoring is even more. Hospitals (and healthcare providers in general) are not incentivized to retain enough staff to deal with spikes in demand. AFAIK, there hasn't been increased training, and probably a lot of training was delayed while in-person education wasn't an option. Healthcare workers were also a lot of the early victims. COVID mitigation measures probably reduce healthcare productivity too, requiring even more workers.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

raxxorrax 5y ago

Not enough ICU (too late when you get there anyway) is a political problem. In my country they reduced it with state funding (you got money for reducing beds, active monetary incentives) and now they ponder about vaccination mandates. This is infantile blaming of others in my opinion. Worse, you don't even hold those that are really responsible to account. So my sympathy if you fail to get an ICU is limited.

noisy_boy 5y ago
It is not practical to have hospitals to cater to extreme spikes - it takes trained doctors, nurses, infrastructure to run all which is in limited supply. Further, even if that can be managed, during normal periods, all that excess capacity wouldn't maintain itself. You need a balance of additional capacity and responsible behaviour supported by science/medicine/evidence. Ignoring that is infantile.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  True, but that was a policy in the last summer and now non-vaccinated people are blamed. This does not match.