They pretty much did end the Delta pandemic in the Bay Area. We had a minor spike up and then it subsided without any major restrictions or strain on the healthcare system. Vaccination rates are 95%+ where I am, so 0.95 * 0.9 = 0.855 and it was still over the herd immunity threshold.

We’re at 80% vaccination in Spain… I think we can surpass 84%.

37.7M fully vaccinated, 47.35M population -- impressive!

I was initially assuming you were excluding kids or other people ineligible to get vaccinated.

It was kinda-possible to return to normality with delta though. The entire EU is above 70% of the total population, with some countries above 80%. And of the unvaccinated, most are children who are less susceptible in the first place.

But with Omicron, it's literally like we're back to March 2020. Norway (with 81% vaccination rate) went from normality to full lockdown in the past two weeks. I'm pretty sure that's coming everywhere else during the next month or so.

If omicron causes lockdowns again than this will literally happen every winter. Vaccines were the end state. There is nothing left to do but accept the risks and move on with life.

People scared about hospital capacity should be asking strong questions to their politicians about why they squandered 2 years of peoples short life with zero new capacity.

The public shouldn’t shoulder the failures of politicians nor these “experts”.

If lockdown is considered then it goes to show how little politicians know about the virus.

We need to treat Corona the same way we treat the flu and we should start now.

As an example the current number of hospitalizations here in Denmark is about 50% of the worst period for the 2017/18 flu.

The thing is that various governments have neglected hospitals and health care, that is the real problem that must be dealt with.

Not necessarily. Eg the Netherlands has ~77% vaccination rate, which is pretty close to the quoted 84%.

I'd go so far as to say 77% is "good enough", ie. it's time to live with the virus and not change our ways because of it.