With travel at least, countries have the right to deny people for any reason whatsoever. Many already mandate various vaccines for entry (even for diseases not transmissible between humans), require a certain amount of money in your bank account, deny you for travel history to other certain areas, etc. A covid vaccine mandate for travel is far from radical.
> With travel at least, countries have the right to deny people for any reason whatsoever.
That isn't where I was going.
There is a current hard push for border controls at each state boundary; e.g., even domestic flights.
Not law yet, but the fact this is even being discussed is unacceptable. As was the employer mandate.
> Many already mandate various vaccines for entry (even for diseases not transmissible between humans),
Nope.
All vaccinations in Japan are optional (albeit recommended, and most parents follow the standard schedule for their children). A Japanese citizen can get a Japanese passport without a single vaccine.
The US has allowed Japanese citizens landing permission for a very, very long time.
Sure, it may be uncommon for an unvaccinated Japanese person to travel to the US, but it was and still is entirely legal. Except for the COVID prophylaxis (which is not a vaccine, as it does not appear to confer any lasting immunity).
> (Note: I didn’t downvote you)
Thank you. There's more than a small contingent of organized HNers that works to bury anything that runs contrary to their nascent religion.
Absolutely wrong. Here's a list of countries and their various vaccine requirements for entry. Despite what you think, there's a lot of them and these requirements predate covid.
Obtaining a passport is completely irrelevant. Countries deny people with valid passports from entering all the time. For example, if they don't have the proper vaccines.
Almost no country that Americans, Europeans, Japanese, Koreans, etc go to in large numbers for tourism ever actually asked about medical history precovid.
Making laughable assertions doesn't help convince the unvaxed to get the jabs.
Try applying for a visa to some countries and yes, they will ask. Some countries deny visas to first world royalty for disease history. China denied people with HIV for a long time. Some African countries require vaccinations for some diseases. Some places require vaccinations for people coming from poorer countries.
The angle you're coming from seems to be be that Americans, etc should be treated specially and not be checked. Go to the wrong country with that expectation and reality will hit you hard.
Down below is someone commenting that they had to get a yellow fever vaccine to visit Kenya.
Maybe you're not visiting these countries. But frankly, nobody cares. Millions are. And they're being checked for proof of vaccines and have been for a long time.
For most travelers, it is the only document you show at the border.
> Countries deny people with valid passports from entering all the time. For example, if they don't have the proper vaccines.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
I have never once seen a Japanese traveler required to produce any medical paperwork along with their passport (and I have flown a lot between both countries).
Could a traveler from Japan in theory be stopped at the border for a lack of vaccination? Probably. How often does that happen? Effectively never.
Well yes. But that’s because when going to a country you first check what are the requirements to cross the border. I’ve never seen a somebody kicked out of the US border because they didn’t make an ESTA, but that’s because everybody in the line triple checked that they have it.
> I have never once seen a Japanese traveler required to produce any medical paperwork along with their passport (and I have flown a lot between both countries).
That's because a significant number of countries that require vaccines also require something called a "visa."
Visas have many years of history, and they're generally obtained beforehand. When applying for visas, you submit various documentation, pay a fee, and it makes your entry process much easier. When traveling first world to first world, visa checks for travel are generally waived. Going first world to anywhere not-first world, or in the opposite direction, usually requires some degree of a visa process.
I have absolutely no clue why you're continuously focusing exclusively on Japan to avoid the fact that vaccine/immunization mandates have global precedents and they've existed forever at this point.
Japan might not mandate a certain vaccine. But if you're going to Bangladesh, Bangladesh does not in fact care about Japanese law.
For an example of how badly this works out, look up the UK guy who tried playing the sovereign citizen card in Singapore and pretending the law regarding disease spread doesn't apply to him. Spoilers: it did.
> I have absolutely no clue why you're continuously focusing exclusively on Japan to avoid the fact that vaccine/immunization mandates have global precedents and they've existed forever at this point.
Because Japan is a counterexample that shows your position to be de facto false.
> Japan might not mandate a certain vaccine. But if you're going to Bangladesh, Bangladesh does not in fact care about Japanese law.
Correct and irrelevant.
Bangladesh also allows Japanese travelers to enter the country without having to demonstrate any proof of vaccination.
Japan is an counterexample because they're fairly unique in that they've been wearing facemasks for decades when they have a cold, they don't have a lot of anti-vaccers, and things work because people are considerate. If that was true elsewhere we wouldn't have needed many mandates anywhere.
It's a nice thought, but obviously not the case in pretty much any other country.
Not if they're coming from a country with a risk of yellow fever.
You're really setting up very narrow condition in which someone might not need a certain vaccine. I'm saying that there's a history in which vaccines and immunizations have been required. If Japan had a yellow fever epidemic, Bangladesh would most certainly require it, just like they do if a Japanese person is coming from a country that does have such an epidemic. That's the precedence.
Saying they require a covid vaccine from a country with a covid epidemic is them applying existing restrictions. And currently, people arriving from most countries are dealing with an epidemic. 5 years ago Bangladesh authorities would deny people for not having yellow fever immunizations. They're within their rights to do the same for covid.
> organized HNers that works to bury anything that runs contrary to their nascent religion.
I downvote posts that can't resist aggressive parting shots like this. Honestly, just leave this kind of bullshit at the door. It will make your comment much stronger. I disagree with some of your points but you're still contributing to the discussion here if you would leave out these remarks.
Whataboutism? We better question criteria for border crossing rather than endorsing further extension of those criteria.
The cost of travel is not coincidently high for those who have less. We will add further burden on people who barely met the financial conditions to just visit a place. And the inconvenience to the already stress inducing security procedure we face each time we take a flight.
We have been tolerating radical measures. Just try hold a bottle of water through airport security. And now we are seeing another type of radical measure: show us that you are up to date with whatever health prevention injection and tests that happen to apply today within a jurisdiction. Another straw, some camel backs are breaking , some find it manageable.
Requiring immunization is a cost-saving measure for countries accepting travelers. The last thing a poor country needs is richer people coming in, getting sick, and ending up hospitalized all while infecting other people.
And the system has hundreds of years, if not millennia, of history. Before immunization was available, quarantines were mandatory even for people without visible illnesses around the world. It's only in 2020 that the idea of this become controversial and some people acted like it was unprecedented through exposure to echo chambers.
Any source you could reference about the general practice of mandatory quarantines prior to immunization?
It was unprecedented in our life time. That's all people expressed. Not acted like. At most that's what they believed.
Please educate us on how the world worked. Provide some sources, and not only a reference of occurrences of quarantines used throughout history, of course the practice existed, but I read your claim is that it was general practice.
Quarantine is a measure that always existed under serious circumstances, where people would most likely spread a disease causing certain death to healthy, whether young or old people. Today these quarantines are absurd measures causing far more harm that supposedly contain the spread of a virus. Which is spreading anyhow.
Following your logic, going to some extreme would lead to any pathogen discovery on anyone could grant a total shutdown of the worldwide traffic, stop all commercial activity, have every single person assigned to residence. The logic is dangerous beyond belief. You mention echo chambers, it applies to all sort of ideas, not only those you disagree with are echo chambered. there is something even more worrying, it is how institutions influenced by profit makers use propaganda to shape the way we think, and to see that you and many others don't have the respect of other people's appreciation. Do as you please, take all the necessary measure you feel would keep your safe. But Respect other people's freedom.
The question is who pays. You want quarantine, that's fine. Pay for it. Pay for the cost of quarantine facilities and staffing where they exist. And pay for the burden imposed on those mandated to be quaranrined. Those who agree with quarantine should accept the cost, not imposing it on everyone. Why? Because you would then quickly realised the true cost of it and start realising the absurd compromise made with those measures. Right now the impact is diluted across government spending, delayed economical, sanitary and mental impacts. So we go along with disproportionate measures until we can measure their true costs
Take a serious look at whats going on across European countries with these mandates. It doesn't make mainstream news, but pick a few countries and find see the growing number of street protests, and the growth in participants. France currently has spinning up movements as a support of medical staff. Hospital employees claiming the measures such as forced vaccines are absurd, lost their jobs as a result of their stance and are actively voicing their concern. Perhaps they are more ignorant than you about history, maybe they are in echo chambers, but please don't make it seem like we have lunatic medical measure deniers on one side and conscious well educated who support ethical measures on the other.
We are talking about a vaccine that doesn't even prevent infection. A vaccine that requires 2 doses ( apparently now a 3rd dose is coming in ) for a questionable immunity in effectiveness and lifespan. A vaccine not mandated to be taken when visiting a country at risk such as Kenya, no. Governments have been pushing for universal vaccination, whether one travels or not.
A worldwide campaign for vaccination, followed by pressure and mandating that a number of public places and businesses only vaccinated people to be, along with a tracker or pass being checked when visitors go to a restaurant, those are radical measures and a threat to individual freedom.
What do you mean, “so what?” Isn’t this exactly what you’ve been complaining about?
> We are talking about a vaccine that doesn't even prevent infection.
No vaccine against any disease guarantees that in any specific individual. Yet at a population level, all the various COVID vaccines which were validated by the trials all reduce symptomatic infection, and the one I took in particular definitely reduces the risk of non-symptomatic infection.
> A vaccine that requires 2 doses ( apparently now a 3rd dose is coming in )
Commonplace. I’ve had several like that; I’d have to look up which disease they were against.
Also, how many doses you need for COVID depends on which of the half-dozen completely different vaccines you’ve been given.
> for a questionable immunity in effectiveness
False, assuming you’re using the word “questionable” in anything other than the sense in which scientists call gravity a “theory”.
> and lifespan.
Common in vaccines, because viruses mutate. Literally why influenza vaccines only last one year.
> A worldwide campaign for vaccination,
So like smallpox? And the only reason yellow fever (and polio, diphtheria, rubella, etc.) isn’t endemic in (e.g. the USA) are the various vaccine campaigns.
> followed by pressure and mandating that a number of public places and businesses only vaccinated people to be,
Quite a lot of childhood vaccines are “your child has the vaccine or they are not allowed to school”.
> along with a tracker or pass being checked when visitors go to a restaurant,
Those were put in before the vaccine, so as to help prevent the spread. They go away when enough people are vaccinated — or get ill — to create population immunity.
> those are radical measures and a threat to individual freedom.
Nothing you’ve listed is radical, and none of it is a threat.
What is a threat to individual freedom is that immunodeficient people have to hide in their homes because too many other people think vaccination is just a personal choice.
Plausibly also when the same get ill and fill up hospital beds so that people with non-pandemic illnesses and injuries can’t get treated.
As the saying goes: “your freedom to swing your fist stops with my nose“.
One problem is that people are self-treating with it. Eyeballing measurements of medicine bought at a farm supply store and sticking it in your child's mouth isn't good.
Furthermore, enabling random unproven treatments is on the same level as saying we should stand by and support homeopathic treatments as a valid alternative to vaccines during a pandemic. We don't let people choose between a tetanus shot or a cup of green tea and olive oil when they step on a rusty nail. It doesn't make sense to let them choose between worm meds and a vaccine when it comes to covid.
If it was 1920 wide of any height of at least 1080, I can now display 1080p media with no scaling (its really hard to get players to not scale while full-screening, and scaling from 1920 wide to 2560 wide can never work well, even with high quality Jinc or even cutting edge machine learning scalers); but also, just streaming desktops that are already on standard monitors.
> People move up from those starter jobs, they don't stay there forever.
The domain of “starter jobs” is rapidly expanding. It used to just be fry cooks at burger chains as well as newspaper boys, and before that we had farmhands, but now everything is a “starter job” that barely pays enough for rent if it does at all.
Basically the entirety of retail is a starter job. Even retail management barely pays enough to live. Delivery jobs are starter jobs. Customer support jobs are starter jobs. Work at a retirement home? Starter job. Many repair jobs are starter jobs. And plenty more.
You’ll see people 30, 40, 50 years old working these jobs. Still struggling.
It's less pleasant to work in a mask, especially anything involving manual labor or a hot kitchen.
Shoes are a bad comparison. The vast majority of people have always lived in a society where wearing shoes is the status quo. This is not the case for masks.
My worry about the anti-plastic bag push is we're going to rush head first into even less sustainable solutions.
With many people not wanting to carry a bag at all times and global demand rising, we're bound to see more Indonesian rainforests being clear-cut for cheap paper, and "reusable" bags with energy and resource-intensive production methods being used once or twice before being tossed in the garbage or ending up on the side of the road.
With bans on plastic bags should come regulations on actual sustainable substitutes. Require locally made paper with verified sustainable wood/recycled pulp or something similar, or we'll be facing another crisis 10 years from now.
You're in luck. Many European countries and Canada have taxed plastic bags for a few years, so you can explore the results those experiments.
For example, Montreal (and many other canadian cities) started taxing plastic bags in 2018. Then bags under 50 microns we're banned. The larger ones are easier to cleanup and recycle. Around 90% of people carry their reusable bags. I always have a tiny one in my backpack, my partner in her purse, and we keep large ones in the car trunk. The bags are usually made of recycled material.
A 5-cent tax isn’t a ban. It’s a reasonable cost for the value that the bag provides carrying your items, especially if that money is put towards reducing impact of improperly disposed-of plastic.
> I'd have been genuinely scared to death about the ozone layer being depleted or acid rain making the planet unlivable by now, yet here we are.
It's retroactively very extreme sounding, but that's because governments collectively acted to enact environmental regulations. The ozone really was on its way to just vanishing and still isn't fully recovered.
The difference is that governments are full of people who don't realize that active efforts prevented disaster scenarios, and they're paid to say the bad things that are happening aren't happening. What was a slow moving disaster is now accelerating and people are still pretending humans can magically fix everything they knowingly fucked up.
Mocking deaths came about people antivax people have been actively lying (take animal meds and herbal supplements to be immune) and threatening (just look at the endless mounds of videos of people screaming about it being the end of the world because they have to wear a mask, and governors threatening schools that require masks) while mocking people who get vaccinated because "haha you're all going to die from the vax! Just give it two weeks and I'll be right!"
Everyone got fed up with those people and the gaslighting they've attempted.
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.
> 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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
Your just-so story does not match the facts [0] and your tendency here and below to spray-and-pray with external links does not support your position as the other commenters have already shown. People showing up at the ER with the sniffles due to media hysteria (as you suggest) do not, in fact, translate into full ICUs. ERs have triage procedures and examination protocols which keep the trivial cases out of the ICU beds.
People are already unable to get emergency care in a timely manner due to the problem of unvaccinated people developing symptoms they statistically would not experience if they were vaccinated. [1] This is really happening. Meanwhile, you are arguing in the realm of hypotheticals, using phrases such as "could cause" and "may have been".
Your goal to prevent a two-tiered society is admirable, but "the ends do not justify the means" of spreading misinformation by summarizing only bias-affirming portions of the articles & studies you cite. The simplest of natural search phrases on the topic such as "ICU COVID-19 unvaccinated" returns results which directly contradict your position (without the hypothetical contingencies) such as this one. [2]
Yes, the vaccinated still get covid. But they're not being hospitalized in significant numbers. The issue is hospitalization. Hospitals have indeed been overwhelmed[1] and considerable numbers of people have been dying at home, many in their 20s and 30s, with covid because hospitals simply can't take them in. Natural immunity comes as a result of being infected, which brings a huge risk of hospitalization and death.
As mentioned elsewhere, pushing natural immunity as the solution is as dumb as chicken pox parties that misinformed people of previous decades used to have. It was unnecessarily dangerous. Yes, people who push that should be pushed out of the discussion. Give them an inch and they'll eat away your country from the inside out. There's a reason the US is such a massive disaster with tremendous deaths and growing (but primarily in select states, and primarily states that have opposition to vaccines for political reasons), while other countries that embraced vaccines are finally getting things under control.
Just a few weeks ago, Japan was approaching national collapse of its medical system. Vaccines have thankfully managed to catch up to and exceed the US vaccination rate and things are starting to get back under control.
The reason things are getting better is because nobody is waiting for 100 million people to get infected. Everyone, even past infectees, is getting vaccinated as a community effort.
> while other countries that embraced vaccines are finally getting things under control.
Are you sure? UK is 89% single dose and more than 80% double dosed but things don't look under control there. Maybe you consider 1,000 hospital admissions per day and rising "under control"?
Given the fact that we have effectively eliminated all other forms of controlling the spread so that BoJo can go around an pat himself on the back, yes this is about as 'under control' as is possible in these circumstances. While the rate of hospitalization is up, deaths are rising quite slowly; we currently have 50% of the case rate from Jan 2021 but only 10% of the death rate.
Fair enough. To be clear, I agree with what UK is doing by opening up and removing vaccine passports, regardless of how much is considered in control or not.
Here in Australia, the lockdowns have gone too far and doing more harm than good. Children and teenagers stuck at home, not learning or socialising properly, is just the beginning of a long list of negative consequences.
The unknown degree to which long-term lockdown spawns further harm, is a politicised gamble. Every day that gamble becomes less worth it.
Yes, the vaccinated still get covid. But they're not being hospitalized in significant numbers. The issue is hospitalization. Hospitals have indeed been overwhelmed[1] and considerable numbers of people have been dying at home, many in their 20s and 30s, with covid because hospitals simply can't take them in. Natural immunity comes as a result of being infected, which brings a huge risk of hospitalization and death.
I can't speak for Japan. But I did read your link. It calls out that the private hospitals in Japan have always been very small, not prepared for infectious diseases. It also mentions that they're not required to take in patients, which could definitely cause a backlog in other parts of the system. Whereas in the USA, hospitals have to treat you. They'll definitely send you a massive bill, but they have to treat you if they have resources to do so.
So that may be the difference between why Japan got so slammed and why we, despite the commentary in the news, have not experienced actual collapse like we feared at first. Allow me to point you to this:
"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."
So it seems we have an overblown narrative in the media, at least as far as the nature and extent of the hospitalizations in America as a whole. Since we also have over 100 million Americans with past covid (and consequently excellent antibodies against covid including against delta), the narrative about healthcare system collapse seems to have been proven untrue. Source for how many people had covid here once again:
"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."
As mentioned elsewhere, pushing natural immunity as the solution is as dumb as chicken pox parties that misinformed people of previous decades used to have. It was unnecessarily dangerous. Yes, people who push that should be pushed out of the discussion. Give them an inch and they'll eat away your country from the inside out. There's a reason the US is such a massive disaster with tremendous deaths and growing (but primarily in select states, and primarily states that have opposition to vaccines for political reasons), while other countries that embraced vaccines are finally getting things under control.
This is nonsense. We already have over 100 million Americans with natural immunity regardless of whether someone likes it or not. It has already happened. And therefore, that solves the debate as far as how we should proceed with covid. It's a false dilemma to keep presenting it as vax or no vax. There is the third reality for a huge chunk of Americans, and that is the fact that for their own bodies, covid is no longer relevant.
We embraced vaccines here plenty. We simply have less of a culture of mandating things, and thankfully we haven't gone the way of Australia yet. You can see my comment history for examples of what's going on there, but I'll paste them here for your convenience. I don't consider this anywhere under control regardless of covid numbers, because the cost will be too high:
They're going to force people who quarantine at home (rather than a government-mandated quarantine "hotel" with guards) to install and use an app. Facial recognition, GPS tracking in your own home. And it will randomly ping you, and if you don't respond within 15 minutes it'll send the police to your house to conduct an in-person quarantine check. Source:
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
They can arbitrarily lock you in your apartment building for up to weeks, no one allowed to leave. Source:
"We already have over 100 million Americans with natural immunity"
This is rubbish, which you have repeated here several times now.
You cited one study, which is a modelling estimate, and ignore the much better studies which actually test for seropositivity and antibodies which show much lower rates of infection.
Your comments about Japan make no sense at all, as they have experienced COVID in a fundamentally different way than the US, initially with considerably lower rates of infection etc, like Australia, Taiwan and New Zealand, these 'Island States' have had better means for containment.
You've completely misrepresented the Atlantic article to suggest that somehow we didn't already know most cases of COVID are not severe - but worse that somehow they don't have COVID when we can and do provide fairly accurate testing for it.
There is no ambiguity about who was in 'all those hospital beds'. We were not guesstimating.
In a pandemic, there's a 100% chance that some people will show up at hospitals and have 'illness' but not the contagious infection causing the pandemic. This is not part of any kind of argument.
Hospitals in many regions are filling up with people who have COVID, that is the material fact here.
This is bad faith, misleading information and rhetoric.
The evidence you sited is a model/estimation and there are much better ways to estimate the prevalence of COVID, namely, literally doing antibody tests.
In Jan 20201, 18% of dialysis patients had COVID at some point - as established by actual testing, not predictive modelling - and they are a population much more directly vulnerable to it, so the actual rate in the healthy population will be considerably lower than that.n it's
The credibility of your thesis falls flat by first offering bad data, when you could have offered something better.
Second, we already know most of those presenting themselves at hospitals have a mild case of COVID. It's normal for people to be concerned, they are not taking up hospital beds. Your 'fact' is a 'non-fact' in this context.
Stop cherry-picking and misrepresenting facts, leaving out important details because it will lead to the 'literal dehumanizing' of people, i.e. their deaths.
For reference, there are no antibody studies which conclude that serpositivity for COVID natural infection is anywhere near 30% in 2020.
It was 3.5% in July 2020, and 20% in May 2021, from testing ~1.5 blood donations, which is roughly consistent with other studies, and parallels sensitivity in the UK.
They're filling up with unvaccinated people because people aren't sure how to be sick anymore. Stay at home and check your oxygen. If it dips to 95 or 94 then start thinking about going to Urgent Care. Not really ER. It's like when you have a baby they drill it in your head not to come to the hospital too soon. People still don't listen but yea. Where is that messaging for Covid?
The hospital morgues are filling up too. What is your advice for the over-capacity morgues? What conspiracy is creating the need for hasty mass graves? Can you think of how that's as common as something like pregnancy?
Literally just have a step back and look at yourself debating this. COVID deniers are literally quibbling over what is written on death certificates as people are dying en masse.
How much is "a bunch" of hospitals? How are you measuring "more strained" "than they ever were?" Because the evidence I found suggests the situation was overblown:
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.
And we have staff quitting over the mandates. Which is causing service shortages in NYC now.
An upstate New York hospital system said it will be forced to "pause" maternity services this month because some employees' refusal to get vaccinated against Covid-19 has caused staffing shortages.
Alabama: "On Wednesday [Sept 8], Alabama's hospitals had 2,724 people with COVID-19, according to the Alabama Hospital Association. There were 68 more patients than available ICU beds in the state that day." [2]
Illinois: "Herrmann told the radio station that the majority of those critical COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated, and said the effect on staffed ICU beds is negatively impacting other patients who need critical care." [4]
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.
I remember 2020. It was a brutal and frightening year for everyone because we had never experienced this before. Hospitals that were not equipped for any serious wave of a more infectious respiratory virus got slammed. I think they did the right thing to send refrigerator trucks as temporary morgues and scale up tent operations and even send in the USNS Comfort just in case. Hospitals got slammed for a variety of reason. Part of it was part poor planning, part new situation straining existing supply chains (which we're still reeling from), and part covid.
The evidence now, as of 2021 like in the article in the parent comment, suggests that half of the hospitalizations in 2021 were overblown though. I wonder what the media narrative about covid would be like if this information propagated throughout.
I had a friend deployed on the Comfort at the time and your understanding is completely wrong. The ship wasn't there to treat COVID cases (remember that it's an enclosed space with poor air ventilation).
And why bring it up? Do you really expect us to forget that hospitals were overrun with COVID and so many people are dying that morgues are overrun?
You're trying to make a completely dishonest argument in saying that hospitals aren't overrun when they most certainly are. We can't even handle all the dead bodies. IT'S A CALAMITY IN AND OF ITSELF THAT WE CAN'T HANDLE ALL THE DEAD BODIES.
(Note: I didn’t downvote you)