> A sufficiently high base rate would lead to this situation even if the vaccine was 99.9% effective. In principle for these factors alone statistically yes, in

> A sufficiently high base rate would lead to this situation even if the vaccine was 99.9% effective. In principle for these factors alone statistically yes, in reality we know this isn't the case. Calling it a vaccine is calling it broken. Calling it a preventative treatment to improve your outcome is more accurate. The studies showing reduced admissions are either grasping at statistical straws or a reglorofied statement of "This is a novel contagion in a herd without immunity at which some unknown percentage may be clinically at risk from genetic or environmental factors." The strongest environmental factors we now _know_ (and had clear statistical evidence for as of July2020!) was vitaminD and a few other well defined risk factors. Hospitalisation in the UK due to exclusively COVID factors reduced dramatically as the pandemic went on due to less strong concern once almost every a&e had seen the full disease cycle from admission to treatments to outcome. Not to mention most COVID cases at hospital in the UK were either contracted there in the younger age groups or they tested positive but this wasn't the concern at the time of admission. One of the major concerns in May2020 was that "up to 30% of the working population may be off it at one time if the virus spreads according to China's numbers and the economic cost of that is too high..." In hindsight this statement didn't compare to the damage of being frozen by indecision combined with no global trade for 2 years, so... As for guessing how many would end up in hospital report 9 models said the peak would be over 2million needing a&e at the same time, despite the model not combining medical risk with any mortality factors, this was simply 10% or so of total cases if 20M or so we're ill at the same time. Again, as a preventative treatment for clinically at risk people (who we did a great job of identifying based on medical history in 2020) we should have never had a 2nd global lockdown, unfortunately the particular group all vote a certain way so...