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.
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."
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).
Vaccines have several effects. Frequently they prevent you from getting serious symptoms (or any symptoms at all) after contact with the virus. Often they reduce the time span during which you are infectious, sometimes they mean you aren’t infectious at all after contact with the virus. Sometimes (very rarely) they have no effect at all.
Only that last point can reasonably be framed as the vaccine not being perfect.
Other than that the vaccines work astonishingly well, even with delta. Them still making it possible for you to be infectious after contact with the virus doesn’t really change that.
Switching to proportion is actually the wrong thing to do. If you look at the data from a place with high vaccination rates (such as King County), even low probability of a break through case among the vaccinated will translate to high proportion.
Edge case that demonstrates the fallacy of looking at the proportion is: let's say you have 100 people, 90 of them vaccinated, 10 not vaccinated. Let's then say that vaccinated have 10% of getting infected, and the unvaccinated have 50% of getting infected. You'll then get 9 vaccinated people that got sick, + 5 unvaccinated people that got sick, for an almost 66% proportion! But that doesn't change the fact that as a vaccinated person, your chances of getting infected are 5x smaller compared to the unvaccinated.
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 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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Again. You're only showing half the story. For example, where is the link to the Snowden revelations?
The red v blue paradigm is bogus. It's dated. It's a ruse. The Powerful v the powerless is far more accurate.
Just days ago - well timed just prior to 9/11 - the Leader of The Free World announced that freedom was irrelevant. And all the watchers of CNN and MSNBC were silent.
Please don't confuse megalomaniac with tyrant. They are not synonyms. We are every closer to The State being even more powerful. Politeness and narrative doesn't make actions any less acceptable.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
