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

cnn.com

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

#61

Post by beanjuice »

dang wrote: post #58
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, a…

Thank you for continuing to do such an excellent job.

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

#62

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

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…

>"[...] we totally hollowed out our health care"

Weird move for one of the richest countries in the world, no?

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

#63

Post by vkou »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #5

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

Sober people sometimes cause car crashes, but that in itself is a pretty poor reason to permit drunk driving.

I'll also point out that simply driving under the influence is a crime, even if you don't actually cause an accident. The statistical propensity of impaired drivers to cause accidents is sufficient cause to imprison people for this sort of thing.

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

#64

Post by bijant »

shoto_io wrote: post #7

As a double vaccinated German, I am very disappointed and angry about this move. Our politicians have failed to prepare the country for the Winter (who could have known...). We lack a basic strategy how to cope with Covid. And now they try to fix this by dividing the country in two. This will have no effect whatsoever on the infections, it will just continue to drive a divide that is already existing and will make an…

Not only are they forcing the unvaccinated to get the shot, they are also forcing everyone who is fully vaccinated to get booster shots every 6 months for the indefinite future. When the vaccines were first introduced their validity was fixed at 12 months and their was talk about extending it ("because they are so incredibly effective").

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

#65

Post by marginalia_nu »

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.

> unvaccinated people are more likely to cause the virus to mutate

Maybe I'm missing something, but the vaccinated population is the one that has introduced an additional evolutionary pressure, so wouldn't we expect to see mutations (that affect vaccinated people) in that population? Vaccine tolerance is no advantage in unvaccinated hosts.

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

#66

Post by skyde »

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…

USA is probably the country with the highest cost for an hospital visit. I am sure the hospital are able to afford hiring more staff :)

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

#67

Post by progfix »

chinathrow wrote: post #18
musicale wrote: post #17

What are the major root causes for the surge in Germany? Low humidity/temperature? New variants? Something else? IIRC last winter in the US at least, health officials and the media were quick to blame irresponsible citizens and social gatherings – but the major root cause seemed to be a new, more transmissible (delta) variant.

Yes, Delta combined with cooler weather and high percentage of antivaxxers.

Antivaxxers, but also unvaccinated children. In the current Covid wave in Austria children 5-14 years old have the highest 7-day incidence.

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

#68

Post by joshuamorton »

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…

Germany has "only a few thousand" ICU beds (and while this nber has trended downward over time, it was never more than 10,000). It's misleading to not phrase this as a percentage, which is something like a sudden 50%+ spike in need for ICU capacity.

Of course that will overwhelm the system.

(Also paradoxically, an improved healthcare system should need fewer ICU beds, so the decrease is probably a good thing)

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

#69

Post by _moof »

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…

Thanks for the insight. I'm curious; is the problem staffing, "beds" (which I assume means actual physical beds, or is this a term of art?), or a combination?

Also curious how one squares the resource constraint issue with the exceptional nature of the events of the past couple years. What I mean is, did anyone think it made sense to massively increase capacity before the pandemic began? I'm not in health care so I don't have any special insight here; i.e. I'm asking, not challenging. From an outsider's perspective it seems like it would've been a tough sell to advocate for what was, in the "before times," an unnecessary increase in capacity.

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

#70

Post by bellyfullofbac »

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…

Analog phone networks break down (you get no dialtone) if everyone in the service area picked up their handset and want to dial-out, they have much fewer lines than handsets, because they calculated what capacity they might need (how many calls would be ongoing at one time) and just have that many lines, plus maybe a safety margin.

I'm guessing it's the same with ICU beds... And now we have a situation where a high percentage of people have picked up their handsets...

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