Vaccination usually means less intense disease, and less issues. 95% of hospital admissions are unvaccinated people (clinical and ICU)

In .nl it is more like 75% of admissions are non-vaccinated, and slightly higher for intensive care.

Does that mean 75% of people that are hospitalised specifically due to effects of Coronavirus were unvaccinated?

Or does it mean that 75% of people that were hospitalised for any cause, and that then subsequently tested positive, were found to be unvaccinated?

There's a big difference between the two. It would still be interesting if it were the latter, as that might indicate vaccination was somehow protecting the vaccinated against hospitalisation for causes that weren't immediately identifiable as being related to Coronavirus. I mean, it could be the case that the unvaccinated were suffering cognitive effects of infection that made them more likely to be in car crashes, for example.

> Does that mean 75% of people that are hospitalised specifically due to effects of Coronavirus were unvaccinated?

Yes, it means exactly this.

And the goal of a good vaccination rollout is for 0% of admissions to be non-vaccinated. It seems like NL is doing well.

The more successful the rollout, the more the ratio goes up - this is counterintuitive, but happens because the number of unvaccinated people around that could possibly catch it in the first place becomes comparatively tiny.

I think we might be getting our negatives confused. A perfectly successful rollout sees 100% of people vaccinated, so 100% of admissions are vaccinated, so 0% of admissions are non-vaccinated.

So basically you're saying that wherever hospital admissions are 95% unvaccinated people the vaccine rollout hasn't worked.

No, it’s working but vaccination has not been completed. And, depending on the location, it doesn’t look like it’s going to complete.

Ok, so what you’re saying is vaccine rollout is working if it’s 0% or 100%.

So what’s the failure mode? 50% I guess?

Can’t something just be in process before claiming it’s a success or failure?

From "A => B" does not follow "(not A) => (not B)"

edit: swapped A and B by mistake, see comment below

Hmm, logically speaking, yes, yes it does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposition_(logic)

Haha, you're right! I mistyped. The left side should have been "(not A) => (not B)"

Sources please.

Anecdotally, my home city's hospitals are so full that they're turning away people from the ER who have a low chance of survival, like heart attack victims.

It's gotten so bad that the military was called in to restore peace.

The doctors there were on a news segment, completely burnt out and in tears, saying that 0% of their COVID patients are vaccinated and they're overrun.

So I believe this metric.

Is this actually true? Would you care to name the city?

Sorry for being sceptical, but I've seen similar claims propagated on twitter "hospital so full, that gunshot victims are turned away". It was untrue both on accounts of being full and there being any gunshot victims.

Google “COVID triage”. Several us states and Canadian provinces have airlifted COVID cases to different places that have open beds. Elective surgery was on hold, and even procedures involving nursing participation were not occurring. Fortunately the current wave seems to be stabilizing at least here in Canada.

Why do the vaccinated accept this? Honest question, because I imagined the breaking point for vaccinated folks to be before there's literally zero space for their medical emergencies due to folks who made a different choice.

I mean, you don't want anyone left behind. But if you're forced to leave someone behind, the question becomes "who?". If you have one emergency bed and in comes a drunk driver from an accident, shortly followed by the pregnant woman he ran over, I'm not a big fan of "first come, first served".

If and when doctors are forced into heinous choices, I'd think such considerations should play a role - for society allocating scarce resources, at the very least.

IANAD and don't have a great source for this, but I've both heard and read about some variety of "professional code" or "best practices" where MDs are expected to leave their personal convictions aside when deciding and prioritizing who gets what care.

I may personally agree with the exact situation you describe, but relying on "common sense" breaks fast at scale. If the doctor(s) making the call are devout adherents of some religious sect, would you prefer that they prioritize the drunken driver above the pregnant woman who needs an abortion of the child that was conceived out of bedlock?

Or denying care to the heroin addict ODing?

IMO, completely removing moral judgment from the medical evaluation process is a net positive.

This doesn't have to mean "first come, first serve", and I assume it doesn't in most places.

I agree, so long as we’re not expecting doctors to do triage, which I believe they generally don’t. Triage is generally don’t by specially trained nurses, as I understand it.

I meant “generally done by”

Can we trust a nurse who refuses to be vaccinated to do the Right Thing at this moment?

What steps have your local hospitals taken to increase capacity since the pandemic began nearly two years ago? Our for-profit healthcare system is tuned to extract and retain as much wealth as possible, not provide as much care as possible. Any unused capacity goes against that goal.

Considering many hospitals seem to be in a perpetual construction mode what else can they do? You can only build and more importantly staff new buildings so quickly and two years isn't going to cut it for that

"A construction expert broke down how China built an emergency hospital to treat Wuhan coronavirus patients in just 10 days"

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-china-managed-build-enti...

Good luck for them, this is absolutely terrible for your doctors. Hope they get help from neighbors with their kids and groceries.

Biggest thing is they're basically out of masks, gloves, etc. and are sleeping at the hospital at this point. The hospitals won't pay to get them better break rooms and until recently didn't even have a great place to sleep.

Past tense or present tense? It's unbelievable for me that at this point folks in North America remain unvaccinated.

Which town?

I don't like to say online but it's in NW USA.

What the, I was thinking you would say Romania, I just read vaccination is only 30% over there and they are planning to move patients to neighboring countries.

I've been told to quarantine because I had COVID symptoms. From the vaccine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

From which vaccine? There are a number of vaccines, and it is expected for the body to "fall ill" a bit since the anti-bodies are being built. This is usually the case with all vaccines in general. I was an infact when I had received the various mandatory vaccines in India, but I recall taking the yellow fever vaccine when I was 32 and I had five days of fever

Similarly, I had a fever + 4 days of 20 hours of sleep after receiving the second Pfizer-Biontech dose.

Makes sense. The vaccine can cause those symptoms, but they could also be due to you catching COVID just before receiving the vaccine.

How do you know they’re from the vaccine?

He can't be sure of it, but it's the way it works, so its expected. Also, 2nd dose usually causes a stronger reaction from the body (you get the symptoms without the risks).

See https://xkcd.com/2425

all throughout the pandemic i visited with nurses, emts and have even been in many hospitals here in seattle and surrounding areas. you know, ground zero or first reported spot.. the hospitals were empty, still are and they were laying people off right and left. but yeah i guess i kept missing the rush or was at the wrong hospitals. it was strange

In a large teaching hospital where I did some consulting work, a plurality of people at the hospital site were visitors (followed by staff, then patients). It is not surprising that hospitals feel empty when you remove most of the people in them.

thats true, i just kept meeting personal who told me otherwise, they weren't conspiracy theorist either, this was before all that started. i actually dated one nurse for a bit she was super bored at work half the time. not saying thats a bad thing, i just would watch tv, hear one thing and then experience something entirely different but you've been around it and saw something different so i just might have been there during weird times or something idk

Why and how were you at so many hospitals? Providing more context could explain what you experienced.

During an infection disease emergency you don't want random people at a hospital.

Hospitals aren't giant ICUs.

First hit on google I got says:

> During April 4–July 17, a total of 569,142 (92%) COVID-19 cases, 34,972 (92%) hospitalizations, and 6,132 (91%) COVID-19–associated deaths were reported among persons not fully vaccinated,

In the same period

> Full vaccination coverage increased from 19% to 54% https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm

Almost all hospitalized patients (90% +) in Germany are unvaccinated.

https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/sachsen/corona-krankenhaus-in...

https://klinikum-darmstadt.de/aktuelles-news/ungeimpfte-coro...

https://www.dkgev.de/dkg/presse/details/mehr-als-90-prozent-...

https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/corona-fast-nur-ungeimp...

Based on that first link, it's actually 99.1% (unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated) for the state of Saxony.

What are they counting ?

How many among patients hospitalized for covid in ICU and not-ICU are vaccinated ?

Second and fourth links are broken.

Second: https://klinikum-darmstadt.de/aktuelles-news/ungeimpfte-coro...

Fourth: https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/corona-fast-nur-ungeimp...

In NL, a respected newspaper ( Trouw ) claims 25% of hospitalized patients has been vaccinated :

https://www.trouw.nl/zorg/wie-zijn-de-gevaccineerden-die-toc...

Dutch obviously.

That rate is going to vary widely as more people get vaccinated. In a country with 100% of its citizens vaccinated, 100% of those hospitalized will be vaccinated. And likewise for 0%/0%. So keep we must always be looking at the whole picture.

Without a doubt, most of the approved COVID-19 vaccines are extremely effective at preventing hospitalization/death due to SARS-CoV-2 infections, this has been shown time and time again across the world.

> In a country with 100% of its citizens vaccinated, 100% of those hospitalized will be vaccinated. And likewise for 0%/0%. So keep we must always be looking at the whole picture.

Of course, that is why I was asking.

For reference, according to "our world in data"'s number the netherlands are 74% one-dose and 67% fully vaccinated.

The US are at 66.6 and 57.6, but there are huge disparities between states, while vermont is at 70,8% full vax WV is at 41.

According to the Dutch government, 87.1% of the Dutch over 18 are partially vaccinated, and 83.5% is fully vaccinated. For people over 12, those numbers are 84.9% and 81.4%.

I don't know if the difference comes from "our world in data" using older data, or because they also count children under 12.

Source: https://www.rivm.nl/covid-19-vaccinatie/cijfers-vaccinatiepr...

There are disparities here too : in my municipality and our neighbouring ones, we are are at ~90%.

Important distinction between % of total population (what OWID reports I believe) and % of eligible population, which >90% is more likely to be.

You might be right about OWID, don't know.

Loosely translated from : https://www.rivm.nl/covid-19-vaccinatie/cijfers-vaccinatiepr...

( Dutch CDC )

Estimated single jab rate for 18+ : 87,1%, 83,5% 2 jabs.

12+, 84,9% one jab, 81,4% 2 jabs.

This is countrywide.

At that point the number of hospitalisations will be so low it’ll lose statistical significance.

With enough samples we can start for the next differentiator, if one exists.

Additionally to the other answers you got, nursing subreddits are fully of testimonies on that subject.

Well atleast antivaxxers have nothing to lose.

Jokes aside, the study seems more like a Coronavirus can cause long term damage to parts of brain. Vaccinated people would likely end up with less likelyhood of this happening (by a big factor) compared to unvaccinated.

Nevertheless this does not seem to be a big deal that you should worry about.

At least to people who die from Covid. The article mentions that they would need to take blood samples every 10 minutes for a week, to find out.

> Is this happening to people who have been vaccinated, or unvaccinated? Or both?

This seems to be related to the severe cases of the infection. However it's not certain in milder cases, that is it may still be the case. Also the neural damage may be reversible (observed for hamsters).

Obviously, the key here is to survive it first.

Vaccination, when effective, is supposed to reduce the chance of a severe case of the infection.

i know know a few people who were vaccinated who've since caught it so probably both

Lest we despair too much, it's important to remember that vaccination reduces the severity, even if you end up infected.

I remember at the start of the year, when the vaccines first came out. A doctor shared some lung X-rays of infected, presumably hospitalised, patients. The vaccinated ones were far healthier.

Interesting data from Israel! https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/

For people that have received the vaccine in the last 6 months ("within date") the per-capita infection rate is an order of magnitude lower (per capita of ~1-4 vs ~15-30) than both the expired vaccinated and unvaccinated.

But when you look at ICU cases, the expired vaccinations are closer to the within-date vaccinations.

So keeping up to date on vaccine means you don't get infected at all. But having even an expired vaccine means you'll have a milder case.

Once the virus enters our body, we are infected. Having antibodies helped us fight the infection.

The efficacy of the vaccine indicates how well the vaccine has taught the body to make antibodies for the virus.

Thus, those vaccinated have a better chance of fighting the infection. That is why there are higher survival rates among those infected but vaccinated.

Since even vaccinated people can be infected, and since infection has a higher spread via inhalation and exhalation, wearing a mask keeps the virus out to a high extent, and helps keep the virus in as well (preventing the virus from spreading around via the infected person's exhalation).

I'm saying this potentially without base, but I interpret them as making the distinction of 'infected with Covid-19' vs 'having Sars-Cov-2 in your body'. They're not exactly equal, and that distinction potentially drives how asymptomatic spread happens.

I see where you're coming from, but I don't think this is quite the right distinction.

Asymptomatic infection, and presymptomatic infection, are both forms of infection. However, yes, they differ from symptomatic infection in terms of severity, no doubt due to lesser viral load.

The distinction I would personally make is exposed vs infected. Being exposed to a virus doesn't mean you'll get infected, where infection is quantifiable tested with a PCR test.

I have a grandparent who's in a very high-risk category for Covid. She's not a hardy person who can weather a complicated disease, and post-vaccination she caught Covid. But she's still alive.

It's impossible for me to know for certain, people who are that high risk do still die post-vaccination. And obviously not all of them die when catching Covid even if they haven't been vaccinated. But I do credit the vaccination for potentially saving her life. She was in intensive care for a single day and never had to be put on a ventilator. It was only briefly touch-and-go, within 24 hours we knew that she was going to live.

Not catching Covid is great, we're all hoping for that. But when my family got the news that she was stable, that felt really good. It's not even just about stabilizing; there was a brief period where she wasn't lucid, and then it became obvious that she was getting more lucid and was going to recover and that she was recognizing people again.

Reducing severity really matters. You're still playing a statistical game, nothing is certain, but... when someone you care about is in the hospital, statistics become important to you.

Glad she survived. As you say, these things are statistical, not guaranteed, but vaccination massively improves your odds.

I know of a few people who can't be older than their ?late fifties? or early sixties? that caught COVID. It was horrendous for them, despite them having the fortune to be double vaccinated.

> Not catching Covid is great, we're all hoping for that.

I don't think that's a long term option at this point, unless you continue to quarantine yourself for the rest of your life.

Eh, I don't think we can say that with certainty. We know that vaccination is driving down cases. It really feels borderline whether it's enough for herd immunity.

(Rich) countries are already rolling out third doses, at least for the most vulnerable. Longer term, we'll have revised vaccines, even more effective against Delta.

Maybe you're right, we can't avoid catching COVID long term. But if that's the case, hopefully its severity is (even further) attenuated by then, due to further vaccination.

Or wear a P100 elastomeric respirator when going in places.

Luckily, most people are persuaded easily.

Indeed they are, and they are about equally easily persuaded by either side.

The neutrality in my comment was intentional.

Consider me having missed the joke then.

I don't think it was a joke. But you are not alone.

We have a word for it in Greek, "τραγελαφικό", when something is so tragic you can't do anything but laugh.

:-) I studied ancient Greek for 5 years btw. Wasn't very good at it.

The concept you describe makes me think of Russians.

Trekkies will use the Talarian form:

Picard, his head down, his palm covering his face.

Just because I've had the vax doesn't mean it worked. I've had other vaxs not take. Probably because I'm immune compromised (bone marrow transplant).

Since I'm safely isolated, I haven't gotten any tests to confirm if my shots worked. I will eventually.