Germany locks down unvaccinated people, as leaders plan to make shots compulsory • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by int_19h » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #176

gizmo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, more broadly, that people would actually be willing to get vaccinated at a rate high enough to reduce the R-value below 1.

What would be the rate in question for Delta? My understanding is that it was feasible for earlier variants, but Delta has R too high to begin with.

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

#442

Post by atsaloli » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

I was born in Soviet Russia, where the party line was: there is no God, there is no Soul, there is no Truth, and truth is what we tell the people. My family came to America to get away from that savage society and to live in a free country, based on voluntary cooperation (free market) not force and violence and coercion. In communism, the group is all and the individual is nothing.

I do not believe it is okay to violate my individual liberties (such as forcing me to undergo a medical procedure) for the common good.

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

#443

Post by glogla » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

tibu wrote: post #394

endymi0n wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> e.g. send families 1 test per week so they can stop the spread quicker. I'm afraid you're missing reality, our kids are getting tested 3 times per week already and still we're in quarantine right now for the second week because an unvaccinated child care assistant has infected half the place and now it's going everywhere. There is no dialogue or discussion going on anymore. We have two factions in this country by n…

As far as I know vaccinated people (like myself) can also spread the virus, the vaccination helps only your immune system to combat the disease. So don't blame the unvaccinated for this. But I'm with you in the medical care part, vaccinated people should get priority. But they won't...

Sadly lot of people (I don't mean you specifically) are dumb and have black and white thinking.

Yes, vaccinated people can still get sick. But they get sick order of magnitude less often and if they do get sick, they are order of magnitude less likely to need oxygen, hospital or ICU.

Yes, vaccinated people can still spread the virus. But they are order of magnitude less likely to do so, and if they do, they spread smaller amount of the virus over smaller window of time.

Yes, one type of the antibodies (the short-term ones that actively look for virus as opposed to the long-term ones stored in bone marrow that look for your own infected cells that take a while to activate) wanes as time passes but that is property of all vaccines and of "naturally" gained immunity as well - bodies don't want to waste energy actively looking for something it hasn't seen in a while.

But in minds of black-and-white people, this means "vaccines don't work!!!11!!!" and that is just sad.

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

#444

Post by belter » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

timdaub wrote: post #369

I find it ironic that there are plenty comments that paint the picture of how mandatory vaccinations divide the country. Hello? Have you been awake for the last month? How much more divided can a country already be when the absolute democratic majority has made their decision months ago to take the shot but 30% are holding everyone back. Anyone in my family or from my friends that has taken one for the team (and got…

You have a strange understanding of democracy...But if we are at it, would like to propose a public citizen petition: Requesting by democratic mandate that we remove the only immunity to come out of this process, the one from vaccine producers....

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

#445

Post by MauranKilom » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #397

somewhereoutth wrote: post #354

Realistically: 1) Mandatory vaccination, all age groups, boosters etc. AND 2) permanently reconfiguring our society to reduce social contacts such that with the vaccines, COVID is suppressed. If the vaccines work well, then small (maybe no) changes will be needed. If they don't, then large changes. WFH, no indoor hospitality etc. We can cycle through lockdowns, we can wring our hands about vaccinating children, we ca…

So uh, maybe we decide that life doesn’t need to be permanently centered around Covid and just move on? And realistically that is what society will do. Move on. There are infinitely more problems in the world than just Covid. Solving for exactly Covid to the exclusion of literally everything else is complete madness. Any rational person will tell you that. Life is to short to maintain a Covid centric lifestyle… life…

So what do you do with the infected people that turn up at the overcrowded hospital? Let them die on the street?

Overall COVID19 mortality is still around 2%. In Germany, for example, we currently have 100k deaths. That would increase fivefold if you let every currently unvaccinated person get infected, and that's assuming we can provide the same level of care for all of them (i.e. hospitals are not over capacity).

> Perhaps we should ask why there isn’t any effort at all into increasing it?

  - Building hospitals generally takes more than 1.5 years.

  - Training nurses does too, although at least there is some elasticity in supply.

  - Mortality among patients hospitalized with COVID 19 is around 10%. Keeping them out of the hospital in the first place is much more effective than increasing hospital capacity.

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

#446

Post by lgreiv » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

nzk wrote: post #292

j0057 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same is said in the Netherlands, but if you double the number of available IC beds, with associated staff (good luck with that), all you've bought yourself is two weeks before those are full as well – because of exponential growth.

Growth isn't exponential forever, cases appear to be going down again in Germany already. Delta waves seem to be only about 8 weeks long (check data from different countries, or here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/briefing/delta-peak-covid... ), so two extra weeks would help a lot. I agree that vaccines are part of the solution. I disagree that stripping citizens of their rights and insulting them on TV is part…

I’ll not take a stance on the correct number of free ICU beds as I do not feel qualified to judge these numbers without more insight on the intricacies of what would qualify fully operational beds, but regarding the stalling case numbers I feel confident enough (after looking at some raw numbers from the municipalities themselves [1]) to dismiss the apparent trend as a statistic artifact.

PCR test units and hospital bureaucracy are past their limits - e.g. regions like Bonn, Essen or Recklinghausen reporting zero cases on multiple consecutive days (Nov 29, Nov 30), which is _very_ unlikely w.r.t. the case numbers of the surrounding regions and those very regions reporting more than one hundred cases today.

The published indicators do not count cases that are reported late [2], which leads to apparently stalling case numbers. Growths may not be exponential forever but given that roughly one quarter of the population is not vaccinated, I would not take bets that the virus runs out of hosts before the health care system collapses.

I agree to the sentiment made that the balance between economic efficiency and damaging austerity for profit margin gains in the German health care system (especially for worker’s loans) has been tipping way too far to the latter in the past decades.

[1] https://www.lzg.nrw.de/covid19/download/laborbest_faelle_sar... (updated each day at 0:00 CET)

[2] https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus...

edit: some formatting.

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

#447

Post by igorkraw » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

throwaway47292 wrote: post #422

timdaub wrote: post #369

I find it ironic that there are plenty comments that paint the picture of how mandatory vaccinations divide the country. Hello? Have you been awake for the last month? How much more divided can a country already be when the absolute democratic majority has made their decision months ago to take the shot but 30% are holding everyone back. Anyone in my family or from my friends that has taken one for the team (and got…

Do you think the % of unvaccinated would stay the same next year? My gut feeling is that it will increase, every 6 months when the new booster is needed we will get more and more people not wanting it. How long until the unvaccinated are more than the vaccinated? 18 months? What happens when they are the majority and ban all vaccines?

In that fantasy world they'd still need to provide evidence that the ban us justified, otherwise people can challenge it in court. The vaccine people have the "benefit" of a collapsing medical system and am absence of a similar load and collapse in countries with high vaccination rate.

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

#448

Post by crooked-v » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #275

crooked-v wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With exponential spread, the actual number of ICU beds really doesn't matter, because whatever you've got will be overwhelmed across a similar timeframe anyway. The only way to actually fix the problem is to get the R-value below 1, which requires mass vaccinations.

not true - infection rate grows sigmoidal and not exponential. that's why at the moment you can observe a stabilization despite few changes in regulation as of now compared to the summer. infection spread saturates periodically after suceptible clusters are depleted. what would make sense is a steady and controlled Durchseuchung with specific protection of vulnerable people (like old and sick) - b/c the best immunity…

> b/c the best immunity is gained by infection

That doesn't help if you die of the infection first, and COVID is extremely lethal among the demographics that most need the direct benefits of immunity.

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

#449

Post by chippy » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

timdaub wrote: post #369

I find it ironic that there are plenty comments that paint the picture of how mandatory vaccinations divide the country. Hello? Have you been awake for the last month? How much more divided can a country already be when the absolute democratic majority has made their decision months ago to take the shot but 30% are holding everyone back. Anyone in my family or from my friends that has taken one for the team (and got…

Its worth remembering that division is due to the other side always.

This is an absolute statement as division is literally caused by dividing between "sides". You get a divided country when the people within it divides each other into sides. Its never been the case when people have said "our side has caused the division". never.

That is the irony you should be finding! If you do finally see this irony you might find more nuance, but maybe more frustration and more uncertainty and confusion but less anger and possibly more empathy to the other. That's why its so easy for people to divide, as its less painful. Dividing and categorizing is how we make sense of the world, but it can be a curse too.

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

#450

Post by int_19h » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

wjnc wrote: post #72

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…

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?)…

How expensive is it as a percentage of overall healhcare spending?