Live data from Hacker News

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

cnn.com

731–740 of 1001 posts

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

#731
post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really the problem though. See, no matter how many ICU beds you have, the people going to the ICU are about 40% or so likely to die from COVID and the remainder will recover but will take a very long time to do so and have a significant chance of having long term residual effects and/or complications. You don't really wish that kind of thing on anybody. So you try to avoid people going to the ICU in the fi…

You're missing the point. The reason people are even mentioning ICU beds are because they're trying to shift the vaccination argument from "do it for yourself, if you want to" to "you have to do it for others". If we had enough ICU beds, there would be NO argument to force people to get vaccinated, just like there is no argument to force people to not smoke or not be fat.

By not getting vaccinated aren't you a danger to others who are not vaccinated?

On the other hand, I don't care if you choose to be fat or smoke yourself to death, that won't harm anyone.

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

#732
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…

In Germany, the majority of the cases are from unvaccinated people getting sick and infecting other people

https://rocs.hu-berlin.de/publication/maier-2021-germany/

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

#733
post #130
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Vaccination does reduce the proportion of people that need ICU beds, but there are pretty rapid diminishing returns on just vaccinating more; countries have reached the point where the majority of Covid patients in their ICUs are vaccinated at well below 100% vaccination. Also, vaccinating younger lower-risk people doesn't help because they're at substantially lower risk of needing the ICU even unvaccinated than some…

You make a good point re vaccinating lower risk patients. In the UK, not only the population has a high vaccination rate, but the rate is particularly high among the population at risk (~95% for the >70yo [1]). As a result, hospital cases and deaths are a fraction of the Jan 2021 peak, even though infection levels are high.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55274833

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

#734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your logic does not work. If people in a developed country would simply become vaccinated and boosted, then only the vaccinated or not condition would typically apply in mainstream society--and not the 3 other above conditions. While all 4 are discriminatory, the first 3 are not inherently due to personal choices or preferences. People choose not to get vaccinated harming society as a whole--and make the other 3 abov…

You're still just talking about jabbed vs unjabbed.

The point is that jabbed versus unjabbed takes precedence over the 3 above listed categories. If everyone who can be jabbed is; then the above 3 categories need not apply, even in the case of omicron. This is especially the case if a booster is given, creating secondary immune response to Sars-CoV-2.

Yes, there will be some immune escape but many of the antibodies that are acquired via boosters will cross react with omicron.

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

#735
post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not the goal. The goal is also not to split society in two and create a group that'll hate everyone forever, just because our leaders can't own up to their mistakes. The goal is to get through the pandemic best we can, and keeping societal values and principals intact should be an important part of that.

what values? half the population doesn't value science, rationality, wisdom, progress etc. I don't wanna be governed by science deniers. I also don't wanna spend years in lockdown because people are refusing to get pricked by a needle

They value all those things just as much as you do, they call some of them different names. And they don't believe that 'the other side' actuals exemplifies or actually values those things. Every lie they see coming from people in power (masks don't work, two weeks to stop the spread, the vaccine will fix this all) makes them less trustworthy.

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

#736
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'm sure what you are saying is true but it doesn't really address the problem at hand. The bird has flown the coup and now action needs to be taken to save lives.

Absolutely agree with you about hospital/medical resourcing though, we have the same situation in Australia. In the name of efficiency these services get paired to the bone, and we have no capacity to respond to unusual events.

The Neo liberal worldview posits that redundancy is bad. I think Western countries in general are suffering from this Anorexia. It cripples innovation as well.

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

#737
post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what to say without being labeled an anti vaxxer... I was very sick for a week after each shot. I'm 30, I work from home, I work out, I'm lean and only go out when running in the forest and buy food. I can't possibly know what would happen if I caught covid, but I wish the vaccination (I'm already vaxxed, but I mean the boosters) was my choice. With my reaction to the vaccines, it's two weeks a year guarante…

if this is your body's reaction to the vaccine, what makes you think your chance of getting very sick from actual covid is very low?

The vaccine is not the virus? If you are under 60 without serious health issues COVID is indeed no worse than a bad flu for the vast majority of people. Certainly not a guaranteed death sentence, let alone guaranteed hospitalization. Especially if treated as soon as detected instead of letting people sit around and get worse until they have to be hospitalized.

https://aapsonline.org/covidpatientguide/

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

#738
post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. The reason people are even mentioning ICU beds are because they're trying to shift the vaccination argument from "do it for yourself, if you want to" to "you have to do it for others". If we had enough ICU beds, there would be NO argument to force people to get vaccinated, just like there is no argument to force people to not smoke or not be fat.

If we had enough ICU beds there would still be an argument because it will cause a bunch of people to die. If you don't care about that then that's your problem, but personally I'd like those old people to stick around for a bit longer, and keep in mind that one day you too will be old. The arguments for vaccination go a lot further than just a lack of ICU beds.

The old people should get vaccinated and self-isolate.

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

#739
post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden did worse than the other Scandinavian countries that enacted stricter Covid restrictions, including lockdowns. Sweden had roughly 5-7x as many deaths per capita as its immediate neighbors of Norway and Finland. Germany had less deaths per capita as well: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

This is often repeated fake news. Take a look at this graph - cumulative deaths since, I don't know, start of 2021 or something. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... Sweden is just barely worse than other Scandinavian countries (definitely not 5-7x). Germany is 50-100% worse than Sweden. So while you might use "total deaths" as an argument that the Swedish "no lockdowns" strategy was worse…

The linked graph shows Sweden at 7x norway's rate, 5x finland's rate and 3x denmarks rate. Am I reading that right? How are you concluding that Sweden's strategy was clearly superior?

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

#740
post #718

If we were a serious society, then the conversation would be about: immune vs non-immune high risk vs low risk infectious vs non-infectious But no, it's jabbed vs unjabbed. It doesn't make sense. Everyone in Germany who wants the vaccine has had it, and if you've had Covid, you're about as protected as the vaccinated. Furthermore, leaky vaccines don't prevent transmission, can't eliminate the virus (animal reservoirs…

>Germany of all places should be absolutely allergic to such rhetoric. You would think! Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it and all that...

Maybe we shouldn't want Germany to repeat the 30's? Just a thought.
Post reply on HN