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Germany locks down unvaccinated people, as leaders plan to make shots compulsory

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Re: Germany locks down unvaccinated people, as leaders plan to make shots compulsory

#51

Post by shoto_io »

yladiz wrote: post #43
shoto_io wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not much. All KPIs are heading down now anyways, just look into the RKI dashboard [1]. Doing a quick math exercise underscores this: 70% are vaccinated, 6 million had it (at least, the number is probably higher), so in total 80-85% of the population already had it or is vaccinated by now. Numbers should go down now from now, which they actually start to do, if you look in the dashboard. [1] https://www.rki.d…

It's not great, and I do wish that the current coalition had prepared a bit more for this winter, rather than assuming 1. enough people would get vaccinated, and 2. that it wouldn't come back seasonally like last year. They really should have prepared months ago. I can't think of a better alternative given the current situation if the end goal is to get people to reduce contact and get vaccinated, short of a full loc…

It’s absurd to believe that this will actually do anything additional to reduce infections on the short term. People don’t get infected while shopping. This is just meant to pressure the unvaccinated to get vaccinated which might help next year.

Unvaccinated people will just meet privately at home and get infected. It’s just the wrong move at the worst possible time.

Re: Germany locks down unvaccinated people, as leaders plan to make shots compulsory

#52

Post by mythrwy »

yladiz wrote: post #16
ipspam wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not meant to make sense. You are being told that your body is no longer yours. It's owned by the state.

As of right now people are not forced to get vaccinated in Germany, so you still "own your body". This is mainly making those that choose not to get vaccinated to make a choice - don't get vaccinated and basically be restricted from doing most nonessential things, or get the vaccine.

I didn't force the teller to give me the money. I only head a gun to his head and told him to give me the money. He was free to refuse at all times.

Re: Germany locks down unvaccinated people, as leaders plan to make shots compulsory

#53

Post by wsc981 »

nzk wrote: post #47

What we're seeing here is one of the wealthiest countries in the world with a population of > 80M people crumbling over a few thousand ICU patients because of long-standing issues that were never addressed. The staffing problems in hospitals (and nursing homes) have existed much longer than Covid. I heard a lot about them myself when I did my FSJ (volunteer work) back in 2004, and it's only gotten worse since then. O…

I don't know why you are voted down. This is very much true for The Netherlands as well. Ever since the year 2000, possibly before, ICU beds have been scaled down.

Diederik Grommers, one member of the Dutch Outbreak Management Team (OMG) states: "it doesn't matter if you're vaccinated or not; 60% of the beds are occupied by vaccinated people; the problems we will encounter in the coming weeks are caused by the fact that we totally hollowed out our health care" [0].

The Netherlands has about 6 ICU beds per 100.000 citizens. Germany has almost 30 ICU beds per 100.000 citizens [1]. Now I know Germany did accept patients from The Netherlands on their ICUs and perhaps Germany is doing the same for other countries, so perhaps that is causing a capacity problem in Germany as well.

---

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFg78PgDgu0

[1]: https://cdn.nos.nl/image/2020/03/30/640384/3840x2160a.jpg

Re: Germany locks down unvaccinated people, as leaders plan to make shots compulsory

#54

Post by detaro »

arrakis2021 wrote: post #3
rasengan wrote: post #2

This doesn’t make sense. What about antibodies? What about the fact that vaccinated still catch and spread the virus? None of this adds up and it’s likely it all goes back to Wikileaks.

What about antibodies? How will Pfizer get paid with your antibodies? You sound ridiculous.

just FYI, previously infected don't count as "unvaccinated" in this regulation.

Re: Germany locks down unvaccinated people, as leaders plan to make shots compulsory

#55

Post by hncurious »

lillecarl wrote: post #6
TechBro8615 wrote: post #5

I’m confused. I thought vaccinated people can spread the virus. Why are they not locked down too?

Because the risk of transmission is understood to be significantly lower, and since unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate it's in the governments best interest to get people vaccinated, a way of accomplishing this could be making life inconvenient for the uncompliant.

Leaky vaccines can make viruses more virulent, though. See Marek's disease:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15757475/

Re: Germany locks down unvaccinated people, as leaders plan to make shots compulsory

#56

Post by nzk »

wsc981 wrote: post #53
nzk wrote: post #47

What we're seeing here is one of the wealthiest countries in the world with a population of > 80M people crumbling over a few thousand ICU patients because of long-standing issues that were never addressed. The staffing problems in hospitals (and nursing homes) have existed much longer than Covid. I heard a lot about them myself when I did my FSJ (volunteer work) back in 2004, and it's only gotten worse since then. O…

I don't know why you are voted down. This is very much true for The Netherlands as well. Ever since the year 2000, possibly before, ICU beds have been scaled down. Diederik Grommers, one member of the Dutch Outbreak Management Team (OMG) states: "it doesn't matter if you're vaccinated or not; 60% of the beds are occupied by vaccinated people; the problems we will encounter in the coming weeks are caused by the fact t…

Thanks, that was an interesting video. I had to rely on auto-translated subtitles but from the little Dutch I can understand, it seems like they got the gist across.

Yeah, Germany has a ton of ICU beds in comparison, and yet, we're struggling exactly the same as any other country. I find it strange, too. In early 2020 I expected we'd see big differences between different countries based on ICU capacity, but we saw the same story everywhere (regional overload around the peak of a wave), with a few minor differences (whether some patients are transferred within the country or to other countries). Perhaps countries have different standards for when they put patients in ICU's, allowing hospitals (and governments) to always operate close to capacity? Would be one explanation, but I really don't know.

High total number notwithstanding though, our ICU capacity actually decreased during the pandemic, see:

https://www.intensivregister.de/#/aktuelle-lage/zeitreihen

The graph under "Gesamtzahl gemeldeter Intensivbetten" shows total capacity (light blue) + emergency reserve (green), dark blue is occupied beds. There was a pretty sharp drop-off in the total capacity a year ago, and a slower decrease all throughout 2021. Apparently, that's mostly due to nurses quitting in droves since the pandemic made their already bad working conditions even worse.

Our politicians didn't lift a finger to prevent or revert this, and now they're blaming a minority for this massive, massive failure. Just makes me really angry, I'll take downvotes for that if I have to :)

Re: Germany locks down unvaccinated people, as leaders plan to make shots compulsory

#57

Post by angelzen »

adamiscool8 wrote: post #49
nradov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current thinking is that new variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, the vaccines aren't very effective in people with malfunctioning immune systems. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...

The link references a specific response to remdesivir, but I don't see how the selective pressure isn't the same in the broader case of low-level or asymptomatic illness persisting in a vaccinated person, particularly when they'll be mingling more and taking less precautions.

A paper, while not specifically addressing vaccination in immunocompromised patients, documents pretty clearly the phenomenon of runaway mutation chains in such patients.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb2104756

Edit: Another piece, specifically addressing immunocompromised + covid + vaccines:

"Studies have shown that immunocompromised people are more vulnerable to being hospitalized or dying from COVID and less likely to develop strong protection from vaccination. But there are also some hopeful signs: additional doses of some COVID vaccines, strategic timing of immunosuppressive treatments and prophylactic COVID treatments may boost protection among some immunocompromised individuals—and restore at least some of the freedoms they have lost."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-immunocomprom...

Re: Germany locks down unvaccinated people, as leaders plan to make shots compulsory

#58

Post by dang »

disneygibson wrote: post #21

Scary stuff. I think all of the authoritarian actions over the last two years can be traced to a single event: the fall of the Soviet Union. Without an enemy to compare itself against, the Western world has forgotten the value of freedom. If East Germany had implemented this forty years ago to fight X disease, it would have been painted as evil, something we don’t do in the free West. Edit: flagged in 8 minutes. I gu…

Your comments are correctly getting flagged because you're taking the thread further into generic ideological flamewar. That's off topic here and clearly against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you'd please review them and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Edit: actually, it looks like you've been using this account primarily for ideological battle, and we ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for or against. I've therefore banned this one. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. It will eventually get your main account banned as well.

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