> All the lockdowns started because we didn't want to overwhelm the hospital system. In the US, the hospital system, at least the ERs were already running on fumes. Our politicians have decided it's better to play world police and kill people overseas than invest in community hospitals.

America had more ER capacity than I think any other country on the planet. Perhaps due to a lack of preventative medicine? I don't know, but it shouldn't be due to lack of ER capacity that this is happening.

> America had more ER capacity than I think any other country on the planet.

ICU capacity per capita is larger in Germany and Austria at least.

Source: https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/en/data-insights/intensive-...

I'm going to need to see some data to back that claim up. ED crowding has been a major problem in the US, but not really so much in Europe, Hong Kong, etc. [1] If you mean total capacity, that's a bad comparison because the US population is huge compared to most developed countries, so of course if capacity needed is a % of total population then the total capacity will be similarly large.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1553-2712....

> In the US, the hospital system, at least the ERs were already running on fumes

>but no investment in increasing hospital capacity

Agree, where did all the billions go? The most expensive healthcare on the planet and we can't find the money to scale and expand a year and a half later.

Many states ban new hospitals from starting without the approval of other hospitals. NO one wants to effect actual change, preferring instead to deal with superficial attempts to deal with the problem.

That being said, hospitals have not been overwhelmed in the United States. The emergency hospitals we did build mainly went unused.

I mean, every hospital director needs at least three vacation homes and two boats right?

We have this whole additional trillion-dollar industry that other countries don't .. nearly every dollar of our healthcare spending flows through insurance companies who add zero value to actual health care but have hundreds of thousands of employees and hundreds of billions in salary to pay.

Health insurers know their time in the crosshairs is coming which is why they're buying up pharmacy groups and providers, to give their offerings a sheen of actual care.

Health insurers (better called managed care organizations) are politically locked in.

Politicians get to use them as scapegoats, and there is no way voters in the US accept taxpayer funded healthcare. Someone has to be the bad guy and allocate the limited amount of healthcare resources available, and I see no reason why the existing relationship of government makes the rules allocating the care, but MCO implements them and takes the heat would change.

Traders also seem to think the same given the gains in MCO market caps. Also, all the MCOs have profit margins of 5% or less, so this game of punting responsibility costs relatively little in the grand scheme of things.

At the root of it all is a demand for healthcare that far outstrips supply, and so these obfuscations are useful in making sure certain socioeconomic classes are able to attain a greater share of it than others.

The average salary of a US hospital director is $125k. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/healthcare-director-salar...

I don't think kick backs, etc. are usually reported salary.

You seriously think you can scale number of hospital beds at an exponential rate?

Vaccination reduces the exponential in the transmission. More hospital beds just fights a constant.

Doubling healthcare capacity roughly lasts for about 3 extra days if no other measure is in place.

I'm all for improving healthcare, in the US or otherwise, but you just can't fire up and destroy healthcare resources like it's your k8s cluster.

> Vaccination reduces the exponential in the transmission

Which trials demonstrated this?

All of them. Even if the breakthrough infections are the same as an unvaccinated person (still being studied, but I've heard everything from one third to same for the first six days), there are fewer infections overall. This causes a sharp average reduction in R0.

The injections were only found to be efficacious in preventing severe illness. Everything else is conjecture at best.

They were found to inhibit infection via PCR testing and comparison with a control group. There may be a waning effect, especially with delta. I don't believe they're perfect by any means, but they certainly aren't worthless.

That is absolutely not something the found in the clinical trials.

"Results: BNT162b2 continued to be safe and well tolerated. Few participants had adverse events leading to study withdrawal. VE against COVID-19 was 91% (95% CI 89.0‒93.2) through up to 6 months of follow-up, among evaluable participants and irrespective of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. VE of 86%‒100% was seen across countries and in populations with diverse characteristics of age, sex, race/ethnicity, and COVID-19 risk factors in participants without evidence of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. VE against severe disease was 97% (95% CI 80.3‒ 99.9). In South Africa, where the SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern, B.1.351 (beta), was predominant, 100% (95% CI 53.5, 100.0) VE was observed."

...

"Among 42,094 evaluable ≥12-year-olds without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, 77 COVID-19 cases with onset ≥7 days post-dose 2 were observed through the data cut-off (March 13, 2021) among vaccine recipients and 850 among placebo recipients, corresponding to 91.3% VE (95% CI [89.0-93.2]; Table 2). Among 44,486 evaluable participants, irrespective of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, 81 COVID-19 cases were observed among vaccine and 873 among placebo recipients, corresponding to 91.1% VE (95% CI [88.8-93.0]).

In the all-available population with evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection based on positive baseline N-binding antibody test, 2 COVID-19 cases were observed post-dose 1 among vaccine and 7 among placebo recipients. In participants with evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection by positive nucleic acid amplification test at baseline, no difference in COVID-19 cases was observed between vaccine (n=10) and placebo (n=9) recipients (Table S5). COVID-19 was less frequent among placebo recipients with positive N-binding antibodies at study entry (7/542; ~1.3% attack rate) than among those without evidence of infection at study entry (1015/21,521; ~4.7% attack rate), indicating ~72.6% protection by previous infection."

...

Efficacy peaked at 96.2% during the interval from 7 days to <2 months post-dose 2, and declined gradually to 83.7% from 4 months post-dose 2 to the data cut-off, an average decline of ~6% every 2 months. Ongoing follow-up is needed to understand persistence of the vaccine effect over time, the need for booster dosing, and timing of such a dose. Most participants who initially received placebo have now been immunized with BNT162b2, ending the placebo-controlled part of the study. Nevertheless, ongoing observation of participants through up to 2 years in this study, together with real-world effectiveness data,14-17 will determine whether a booster is likely to be beneficial after a longer interval. Booster trials to evaluate safety and immunogenicity of BNT162b2 are underway to prepare for this possibility.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v...

Your link is missing vital information.

From [1] page 13:

> Efficacy is being assessed throughout a participant’s follow-up in the study through surveillance for potential cases of COVID-19. If, at any time, a participant develops acute respiratory illness, an illness visit occurs. Assessments for illness visits include a nasal (midturbinate) swab, which is tested at a central laboratory using a reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test (e.g., Cepheid; FDA authorized under EUA), or other sufficiently validated nucleic acid amplification-based test (NAAT), to detect SARS-CoV-2.

So, if you didn't present symptoms of an acute respiratory infection, you weren't PCR tested in the trial. Since we know that the vast majority of PCR positive tests come from asymptomatic and very mild cases, this trial can't be used to draw any conclusions about it's ability to prevent infection.

Here's another interesting bit from page 42:

> Among 3410 total cases of suspected but unconfirmed COVID-19 in the overall study population, 1594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1816 in the placebo group. Suspected COVID-19 cases that occurred within 7 days after any vaccination were 409 in the vaccine group vs. 287 in the placebo group. It is possible that the imbalance in suspected COVID-19 cases occurring in the 7 days postvaccination represents vaccine reactogenicity with symptoms that overlap with those of COVID-19. Overall though, these data do not raise a concern that protocol-specified reporting of suspected, but unconfirmed COVID-19 cases could have masked clinically significant adverse events that would not have otherwise been detected

The document doesn't outline what 'suspected' cases are.

Here is the paragraph that specific states data is limited around transmission (page 48):

> Vaccine effectiveness against transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Data are limited to assess the effect of the vaccine against transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from individuals who are infected despite vaccination. Demonstrated high efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 may translate to overall prevention of transmission in populations with high enough vaccine uptake, though it is possible that if efficacy against asymptomatic infection were lower than efficacy against symptomatic infection, asymptomatic cases in combination with reduced mask-wearing and social distancing could result in significant continued transmission. Additional evaluations including data from clinical trials and from vaccine use post-authorization will be needed to assess the effect of the vaccine in preventing virus shedding and transmission, in particular in individuals with asymptomatic infection.

Now, this is if you take the studies at face value, which I don't. We know Pfizer and the FDA are full of frauds and grifters.

1: https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download

Ahh, I see we have one with some critical thinking facilities left! Hurry up HN, downvote this guy!!!!

Sadly most don’t want to consider it and just parrot what they’ve been programmed to by the television. The worse part is they think they are righteous or whatever. So delusional.

What about the parent's statement provides critical thinking? Would you invest billions in building out ER facilities now? I am curious what is the less-wrong solution to help citizens. Is to increase care for the sick or decrease the likelihood of sickness?

The less-wrong solution to help citizens is to encourage a healthy diet including weight loss, stop spreading FUD, and to implement the MATH+ protocol for those who do fall seriously ill instead of chiding and coercing a clearly hesitant public into taking an experimental therapeutic treatment (that seems to do less than originally promised as the days tick by) and harsh lockdowns.

Instead we see the opposite, which has little to do with the best interests of the citizens, including the funneling of tax dollars to Pfizer and the rest. The parent comment highlights that and explains what’s actually going on, despite the narrative provided by <compliant> ”experts.”

You believe that encouraging Americans to be healthy will work? Has it worked before? In my experience from years in hospitals, the majority of people want less mental and physical health requirements. They want a heart pill or diabetes pill instead of a nutrition-based approach. What would you do in this scenario: as a physician, your patient is at high risk for heart disease, over weight, and above 45 years old. Do you recommend they drastically change their life style and increase routine lab work until improvements are made. Your patient could do nothing and be at risk for a stroke. Your other option is to have them ingest two pills daily to control their symptoms but not the root cause - their lifestyle.

A life is in your hands. I’ve witnessed and lived through both scenarios. The majority of the time people want the pills.

I am curious how you would solve for modern human ailments. Would you impose a government sanctioned food protocol? Would you let people die who refuse to increase their quality food intake and exercise?

> You believe that encouraging Americans to be healthy will work?

Yes, however it starts with improving the food preparation options and raising food quality. There is horrible stuff in our food - stuff that is outlawed in Europe because it is a known toxin.

Something has clearly gone wrong in the US and it’s a pretty patronizing position you have taken to put the blame entirely on the public. The government institutions supposed to be watching out for this stuff have failed, and are likely corrupt.

> Would you impose a government sanctioned food protocol?

Nah, not needed. This is fixed by a PR campaign and some cultural adjustments.

For example, for some reason the media has been promoting “body positivity” in recent years and encouraging unhealthy lifestyles. Those people who actually bought into that idea were set up in a worse position when this kicked off.

Probably not promoting bad ideas like that would be a good place to start. The commies will whine that it’s “fascist” or not “big hearted” whatever, though.

—-

In the end, I guess only people who can see through the lies will survive, and that’s just the game we’re playing now. That doesn’t mean that we should accept living a society where this is normal.