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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

#71

Post by fileeditview »

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…

So true and not mentioned enough by the media. The fact that we lost more than 4000 ICU beds over last year (during the Corona pandemic!!) because of personnel shortage is mind-boggling.

Instead of rewarding those who worked these horrible jobs and maybe attract new workers with better conditions (e.g. more holidays), better pay or tax reduction, our politicians did campaigning and ignored the upcoming winter.

Now they blame it on the unvaccinated and want to force high-speed vaccinating as many people as possible. But it won't help now. And it won't work either because they also messed up the whole vaccine supply chain.

I have long lost all hope in politicians. 99% of them are ridiculous creatures without a spine and only interested in their own progress.

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

#72

Post by wjnc »

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…

Counter argument: Medical personel is hard to find and expensive, as is IC infrastructure. Why would we've needed to keep spare IC capacity for decades only to find out we need it in case of a pandemic? The German argument could be re-constructed into an argument that any country will run into IC shortages regardless of the level of IC availability. In an exponential curve it's only three or four cycles (8-12 days?) away, regardless of capacity. Hence, keep your IC capacity at regular efficient rates and use vaccination to get out of the hot seat. IC's save some but lose many. Vaccinations save many.

I can't say that I like the Dutch approach to covid in general, but in my first job I was deep into governement budgetting of hospitals (just before the introduction of the current Dutch reimbursement system) and it was a whole lot about 'keeping beds' and keeping patients in them to fulfill the budget. That was not what I'd call a generally efficient system. Even the health outcomes were worse since outpatient treatments usually have fewer side effects. What I've learned in that job is that doctors are like people. They respond to incentives. If that incentive is to have beds filled with people, you get just that. Beds with people.

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

#73

Post by fileeditview »

_moof wrote: post #69
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 d…

It's staffing. See my other comment. Germany lost > 4000 ICU beds during the past year.

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

#74

Post by emsy »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #62
wsc981 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Privatization of infrastructure in Germany has always led to a, at least perceived, decline in quality. This has been true for postal service, railway, telcos and now health care.

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

#76

Post by crooked-v »

_moof wrote: post #69
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 d…

"Beds" means "staffed beds", not just physical places to put patients. It's a combination of facilities and staffing.

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

#77

Post by bellyfullofbac »

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.

Probably cold weather, Delta, and people getting lazy about their precautions, after 18 or so months of pandemic.

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

#79

Post by _moof »

fileeditview wrote: post #71
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…

So true and not mentioned enough by the media. The fact that we lost more than 4000 ICU beds over last year (during the Corona pandemic!!) because of personnel shortage is mind-boggling. Instead of rewarding those who worked these horrible jobs and maybe attract new workers with better conditions (e.g. more holidays), better pay or tax reduction, our politicians did campaigning and ignored the upcoming winter. Now th…

I might be working from old info here but my understanding is that vaccination reduces the ICU burden. Assuming that's still good info, is it totally unreasonable to blame the unvaccinated for ICU overload?

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

#80

Post by fabian2k »

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…

Something like 50% of the people in intensive care for COVID still die.

Even if we were able to handle the load on the healthcare system, that still would be a very large amount of unnecessary suffering and death. And even though there are some fundamental issues with working conditions and pay in this area, fixing them would not be enough to be able to handle the load that an exponentially growing viral disease could cause if it remains unchecked. If you do not stop the exponential spread, even with twice the capacity you'd only gain another 1-2 weeks until you're at capacity anyway.

The vaccines work well and are safe. The problem is that too many people didn't take them. There's plenty of problems with how this was organized in Germany, but in the we simply didn't manage to convince enough people to get vaccinated.

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