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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

#81

Post by mminer237 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #65
lillecarl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would put pressure to avoid the vaccine. However:

1. There would be fewer cases compared to unvaccinated people to give it the chance to mutate. It doesn't have any more chance to mutate among vaccinated people. It has less chance. Just a lot of mutations that still look like the current virus will get killed off by antibodies.

2. Randomly making changes to the spike protein, this virus's most important part, is likely to reduce the virus's danger.

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

#82

Post by Tomte »

_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…

Staffing, mostly. There are a lot of "beds" still available, just nobody to tend to them.

But another thing that always gets scrambled in the newspapers is the "level" of ICU beds.

The ICU at my town's hospital (and it's not small) has patients that would lie in a normal station at a big university hospital.

ICU bed != ICU bed. In smaller hospitals, ICU means "post-op, needs surveillance" or "gets oxygen".

At a large hospital ICU means "ECMO" or similarly severe conditions.

So when you're reading that there are x thousand ICU beds still available in the country: most are not really up to the task when it comes to a severe covid case, and furthermore, an ICU bed at the other end of the country doesn't help you much.

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

#83

Post by poorjohnmacafee »

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…

Very insightful but doubtful more capacity would prevent the mandates, given that state medias around the West are all now calling for mandates, two tiers, and punishment for those who don't follow. Like the next round of "war on terror" measures where states get to shift their citizen management. Don't forget to call a spade a spade.

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

#84

Post by FiberBundle »

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.

Another factor is that the German government tried to keep infection rates low at all times, leading to very little natural immunity in the population compared to other countries.

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

#85

Post by _moof »

crooked-v wrote: post #76
_moof wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for the clarification. (I'm a little surprised I haven't seen this spelled out before, considering how much ink has been spilled over this issue, but I digress.)

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

#86

Post by joshuamorton »

lbj wrote: post #75

In Denmark we have now reached 90% vaccination rate. We have more infected, the same number of admissions in hospital and a 15% higher death rate than all of 2020. I really fail to see why we are blaming the unvaccinated and not Pfizer/Moderna.

Are hospital admissions and mortality rates similar among vaccinated and nonvaccinated individuals?

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

#87

Post by throwntoday »

lbj wrote: post #75

In Denmark we have now reached 90% vaccination rate. We have more infected, the same number of admissions in hospital and a 15% higher death rate than all of 2020. I really fail to see why we are blaming the unvaccinated and not Pfizer/Moderna.

No you don't understand, the unvaccinated are the reason the vaccinated are getting the virus /s

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

#88

Post by mlazos »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #65
lillecarl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“Evolutionary pressure” doesn’t really exist if the virus doesn’t get a chance to replicate. The virus is trying to find a mutation which bypasses the vaccine, the more chances it gets the better. This is why people talk about animal reservoirs and immunocompromised individuals. The chance of a beneficial mutation occurring increases the more the virus is able to replicate within an organism. It replicates more in unvaccinated organisms.

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

#89

Post by throwaway224466 »

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…

"Idealogical flamewar" a.k.a. any non-leftist talking points so downvoted into oblivion. You are a terrible human being and there will likely soon be consequences for people supporting this non-logical persecution.

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

#90

Post by blub »

Very thought-provoking this mistreatment of the unvaccinated.

The process started with demonizing them to the point of being singled out and blamed for how the disease is impacting society. When the discrimination started, there were very few willing to speak for them. Particularly malicious was the expansion of the term anti-vaxxer typically used for a fringe minority which “rejects all vaccines for everyone” to all of those that “reject one single vaccine for themselves”.

Now a measure that will come too late and impact the entirety of society is sold as a means of finally forcing them to conform.

From the outside, this may look like a perfectly executed propaganda campaign. One can’t exclude that the government (like the Canadian gov which actually got caught I believe) took advantage of the chaos and flexed its propaganda muscles a bit. But the more scary possibility is that a frightened and manipulated population + incompetent government in CYA mode is enough to try to override the constitutional principle of bodily integrity.

And it’s precisely this principle which seems to be the last thing preventing the state from forcing or punishing the unvaccinated too hard, limiting them to a fine.

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