The problem is that the lockdown was initially tied to hospital capacity. Then, we somehow thought we could wait for a vaccine, which I guess is a workable plan at this point. In the meantime though, we tore down field hospitals, and hospitals failed to develop more flexible ICU capacity after almost two years to "prepare". There's apparently a huge amount of COVID money going to drug companies, but there's not a pipeline for investment into healthcare infrastructure. In any case, it's strange to hear you talk about things we were hearing in early 2020.

1% of the population is not getting COVID all at once. That's 1% of people who happen to have COVID right now. A much smaller number.

The number of intensive care beds available in New York City pre-pandemic was about 1,600 - total.[1]

The population of NYC as of 2019 is 8.419 million. 8,419,000.[2]

NYC couldn't have more then 0.02% of its population in hospital at any given time. And that number is not available capacity - that's total. Generally at any given time 50 - 80% of those beds are in use for other patients since you don't build ICU capacity just to have it (remembering that ICU capacity is beds + equipment + supplies + staff).

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/coronavirus-nyc-more-than...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=new%20york%20city%20populati...

Those are all true and useful facts. And things sucked in NYC for a while.

Now that we have vaccines and people with natural immunity, I imagine the percentage of the population contracting covid and getting sufficiently sick is (should be?) going down. Hopefully that plus better therapeutics should keep things from sucking as bad again.

Of course, with large numbers of nurses quiting over vaccine mandates, the capacity is going down and things might suck again.

"Beds" is a meaningless figure... it really refers to staff. Now they are massively firing nurses who won't get vaxxed (which should be red flag in and of itself, wonder what they are seeing day to day) which in turn leads to less beds... which then in turn helps justify the "need" for mandates. All of those nurses have been getting daily boosters of covid from actual patients every day and we are pretending like they all don't have preexisting immunity.

> Now they are massively firing nurses who won't get vaxxed (which should be red flag in and of itself, wonder what they are seeing day to day)

Single-digit percentages in most hospital systems.

If you're evaluating vaccine safety based on the opinions of healthcare professionals, there's good news for you.

https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-sur...

> The American Medical Association (AMA) today released a new survey (PDF) among practicing physicians that shows more than 96 percent of surveyed U.S. physicians have been fully vaccinated for COVID-19, with no significant difference in vaccination rates across regions. Of the physicians who are not yet vaccinated, an additional 45 percent do plan to get vaccinated.

(That one's pre-mandates, incidentally.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/nyregion/vaccine-health-c...

> As the vaccination mandate went into full effect on Monday, 92 percent of the state’s more than 650,000 hospital and nursing home workers had received at least one vaccine dose, state officials said. That was a significant increase from a week ago, when 82 percent of the state’s nursing home workers and at least 84 percent of hospital workers had received at least one dose.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/09/28/nc-hospital...

> Novant Health spokeswoman Megan Rivers told The Washington Post that more than 99 percent of the system’s roughly 35,000 employees have followed the mandatory vaccination program. She said in a statement that Novant Health was “thrilled” those who chose to be vaccinated have given patients and visitors “better protection against COVID-19 regardless of where they are in our health system.”