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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

#181

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.

We have 57 million fully vaccinated [0] people and 6 million infected/recovered [1] out of 83 million inhabitants. The recovered even have to get a shot later to keep their status as recovered/vaccinated (which exempts from the restrictions that are imposed now), so they might even be considered as a subset of the vaccinated group. More infections therefore would not have increased the total number of immune people but only cost more lives.

Beside that we can vaccinate a multiple of the number of newly infected people per day just fine. It's been about people being unwilling to get the shot, not availability of vaccines for quite a while now. Example: one day of vaccinations like yesterday (~1 Mio) [0] equals two weeks of new infections at levels like today (>73000).

[0] https://impfdashboard.de/

[1] https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/478220a4c454480e823...

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

#182

I would be very happy if my government did the same. What a relief it would be! It's a public health measure, like public sanitation requirements, and driving a car that meets safety requirements. Unvaccinated people should be free to do whatever they want, short of risking infecting other people. Your freedom ends where your fist ends and my nose begins.

You might have a point if the vaccine fully prevented transmission or infection, but it doesn't.

Passing a driver's test doesn't fully prevent all car accidents, and yet we still require potential drivers to pass a test. Just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

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

#183
post #96
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.

What is the breakdown of unvaxxed/vaxxed in hospital admissions and deaths? Serious question. I wonder about vaxx effectiveness when I see these numbers. But the breakdown matters. I live in Nova Scotia, Canada. Our breakdown from Mar 15-Nov 26 is[1]: - Hospitalizations: 84.4% unvaxxed, 9.6% 1 shot, 6% 2 shots - Deaths: 69% unvaxxed, 7.1% 1 shot, 23.8% 2 shots Total admissions and death rate numbers don't tell the wh…

> We have more infected, the same number of admissions in hospital and a 15% higher death rate than all of 2020

Another really, really important piece of context is how human behavior has changed. In 2020, many people were very cautious about covid. For example, in liberal US cities like Seattle and Portland, many indoor activities were restricted pretty hard until 2021. People didn’t dine out in person, or didn’t attend the movies. In 2021, people have more or less returned to normal, less-cautious behavior. While masks are still worn, people are comfortable dining out and going to the movies and all sorts of activities.

My point is that this change in behavior is likely to “blame” for the increased cases. If people were behaving the same way a year ago as they are today, cases would have been significantly worse then.

In other words, vaccinations have allowed us to return to a mostly normal life while stopping cases from rapidly increasing. At the very least, anecdotally, in places with lower vaccination rates, a return to normal life has been accompanied by more covid scares.

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

#184
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 coul…

The problem isn’t simple and certainly not a matter of just vaccinating. A big part of the problem is that govt was confident that two jabs in the summer would be sufficient because of two faulty assumptions: that immunity would last and that fully vaccinated people would not spread covid.

Also, the government knowingly ignored warnings by the RKI (german institute for public health) saying that numbers and hospital admissions will go up rapidly in autumn.

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

#185
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the breakdown of unvaxxed/vaxxed in hospital admissions and deaths? Serious question. I wonder about vaxx effectiveness when I see these numbers. But the breakdown matters. I live in Nova Scotia, Canada. Our breakdown from Mar 15-Nov 26 is[1]: - Hospitalizations: 84.4% unvaxxed, 9.6% 1 shot, 6% 2 shots - Deaths: 69% unvaxxed, 7.1% 1 shot, 23.8% 2 shots Total admissions and death rate numbers don't tell the wh…

This is exactly simpsons paradox. It is a shame so few people have heard of it! This same breakdown implies that vaccinating half of the currently unvaxxed would do a lot to reduce pressure on hospitals. That is, if you have 80% vaxxed, a mere 10% increase could halve the number of hospital beds needed. No wonder governments are going so hard on vaccinating the hesitant and antivax.

No, this does not imply that going from 80% to 90% vaccinated could halve the number of hospital beds needed - that reasoning would only work if the vaccine completely prevented Covid-related hospitalizations, in which case zero vaccinated people would be hospitalized and Simpson's paradox wouldn't apply. What it actually implies is that at much less than 100% vaccination, you hit a point where vaccinating the remaining population does very little to reduce pressure on hospitals because most people who're hospitalized have been vaccinated, despite the fact that the vaccines do reduce the risk of hospitalization. That is, the benefits of vaccinating the last few percent of the population actually diminish rather than increasing like they would do with a more effective vaccine.

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

#186

As a foreigner living in Germany I could live with it if there were otherwise sound measures, but it's mostly been a bunch of wishful thinking. There was a rush last summer to open everything up despite it being relatively clear it was way too early and a lot of people really understood it as "corona is over". Even this I could understand, but this year they do the same thing again! Surprise, surprise that there is a…

There was a paper recently circulating the media which shows the immense amount of "esoteric" people in German speaking countries. Those people are responsible for the staggering vaccination numbers and spreading of conspiracy myths around this crisis. It's so prevalent, I can't remember anyone who at least once spread some unscientific bullshit in the last 2 years here.

The handling of those people in the media and the way their opinions are presented equally with scientific facts result in this reluctance politicians displayed in this crisis. Now we all have to suffer because of it. I hope we finally mandatory vaccinations...it's overdue.

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

#187
post #120
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…

This is such a bizarre take. If the ICUs are filling up, the solution should be to prevent people from getting sick, not to make the ICUs bigger. There are undoubtedly many problems in the German healthcare system, but the current surge is clearly due to the very large number of unvaccinated people.

the two weeks were to build up health care capacity. We erected field hospitals to manage the sick and then closed them because they weren’t being used.

If this truly is an energy and hospitals truly are at risk, find a way to build more capacity even if it is temporary. Blaming the public for the failure to do this is wrong. And if you aren’t building this capacity… maybe this really isn’t an emergency?

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

#188

71% percent of Germans support mandatory vaccinations for COVID, this is from a poll published today. Our governments failed pretty hard in this wave, which is why we now need to take more drastic measures again when the entirely predictable course events would take this winter became apparent even to our politicians. But at a point were planned operations for other diseases like cancer get cancelled all over the pla…

>It is clear now that the vaccines require 3 doses to be effective Looks like you are really a optimist. I would say, 'It's clear now that the vaccines require one dose every 5-6 months to be effective against hard covid symptoms'. Additionally I would not say 'Our governments failed pretty hard in this wave', instead I would say 'Our governments failed hard during the complete pandemic'.

In the very beginning Germany was doing _extremely_ well, until the protesters showed up.

Which is crazy, because Germany managed to do well by good organisation and mass testing, not by lockdowns.

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

#189
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 coul…

You forget one, the people that are dying have taken the risk for ther own and didn't want to get vaccinated. It's ok when they die, it's their decision that's gone wrong. Other people didn't got vaccinated and will never get covid anywhere. This is a decision that not the government has to make for the people.

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

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have a point if the vaccine fully prevented transmission or infection, but it doesn't.

Passing a driver's test doesn't fully prevent all car accidents, and yet we still require potential drivers to pass a test. Just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

Forcing a standardized test is not the same as forcing an injection that people still have to sign a legal waiver for.

If you're talking about taking away freedoms and forcing injections, it better solve something, not "meh it probably helps".

-- edit --

To below, the 14th amendment. Why do you think they keep losing court cases with the vaccine mandates?

My body my choice. Ring a bell? If it's a good enough argument to kill life inside you, it's a good enough argument against forced injections.

Don't be a useful idiot, don't advocate for your own oppression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

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