That's coming from someone who is working from home, isn't it? There's also those of us who have exposure to the public and are reaching old ago, and we have lost all patience for the sunshine-and-unicorn crowd.

I mostly WFH, but have to visit government offices and construction sites. I have 2 kids in daycare though, so I might as well be living in a petri dish of viruses.

You'll be taking up a hospital place for people who can't get vaccinated. That seems pretty dangerous.

https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=30036474&goto=item%3Fi...

This is identical to saying "I'm just pissing in my corner of the pool" or "I'm just polluting my own land".

Unless you are staying home and getting food delivered?

What if your body incubates the mutation to the next Greek letter and it is highly transmissible, our vaccines don’t work on it, AND it is more deadly?

What's your assessment of the vaccines ability to reduce severity of infection and reduce the number of people who need hospitalization or even length of hospitalization?

Insufficient information.

Have you taken other/alternate measures to prevent yourself from becoming a risk factor to yourself and others?

Sure but if you need to get hospitalized due to Covid it's absurd that the rest of us need to bear that financial burden via increased insurance prices or increased taxes

what if they're actually much healthier than average (because of other personal choices)? and what about all the other bad decisions people do wrt. their health (which is what causes the vast majority of healthcare expenditures)?

Those other situations should also be factored into the price they pay for healthcare. That being said, many of those other issues (addiction, obesity, etc.) are much more difficult to "prevent" than getting a vaccine. If there was a vaccination for those issues, then I would put them in exactly the same class.

Let's stop going on the internet and showing off stupid decisions first, shall we?

Stop with this shit. It's not true. Most people in the hospitals for Covid are vaccinated. This is not an indictment against the vaccines, they prevent hospitalization, but the sheer number of vaccinated people still means they're the majority in the hospitals and ICUs, and the unvaccinated are a minority across the board.

If you disagree with this statement, then here's hard proof: See page 7 of this UK report (latest data) tracking the vaccination status of Covid hospitalizations and deaths: https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publication...

Here's the opposite "hard proof", CDC official: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidvi....

I've actually had a look at the document you pointed. It's very confusing. The last line of the report at page 7 states:

Rates of hospital admissions in the time range (8/nov - 5/dec):

- fully vaccinated: 493

- partially vaccinated + unvaccinated: 267

Rate per 100k admitted to hospital, same time range:

- fully vaccinated: 39

- partially vaccinated + unvaccinated: 208

I'm not sure how to reconcile the numbers above. Page 8 is a graph plotting the second metric (rate per 100k).

The report you just linked doesn't show the raw numbers of people in the hospital, it shows the proportionate rates, which is exactly what I just addressed.

Most people in the hospitals for Covid are vaccinated.

And I'm sorry, I thought this was a thread about Ireland?

> Most people in the hospitals for Covid are vaccinated.

Again, the fact that the numbers don't reconcile still stands, and without clarifications, that table and any references are meaningless.

From page 7:

- Rates Admitted to Hospital per 100,000: All adults, Fully vaccinated: 39.0

- Northern Ireland population: 1.9 millions

Expected admitted in the whole N.I: (39 * 1900 / 100) = 741

- Total admissions: All adults, Fully vaccinated: 493.

The numbers 741 and 493 don't match.

The rest of the table is inconsistent as well; for example, the proportions between fully and non vaccinated, between the rate per 100k (right), and the absolute values (left), are inconsistent between each other.

Futher, on the second page:

> During this 4 week period there were 790 hospital admissions, 36 (4.6%) of which had received a third dose.

The number 790 and 36 are other two who add to the pile of inconsistency. Until everything is explained with exactness, that report is essentially garbage.

> And I'm sorry, I thought this was a thread about Ireland?

In absence of correct data about N.I., the CDC report is a reasonable source, also by mean of being considerably larger scale. It can be acceptable to refute it when referring to Northern Ireland, but in this case valid data is required.

---

Additionally, about this:

> Most people in the hospitals for Covid are vaccinated. This is not an indictment against the vaccines, they prevent hospitalization, but the sheer number of vaccinated people still means they're the majority in the hospitals and ICUs, and the unvaccinated are a minority across the board.

This is a common mathematical mistake; see conditional probability notions.

To explain the mistake using extremes, if all the population except one was vaccinated, and one not vaccinated, hospitals would have 100% of vaccinated people, but the conclusion that because of that being vaccinated is less effective than not being vaccinated, is wrong; one needs other variables to make this conclusion.

You're grasping at all sorts of straws here. Never said being vaccinated is less effective than not being vaccinated, an absolutely insane takeaway from what I've said. Now the official government data from the UK is bullshit, and the CDC is a better source to explain what's happening in Ireland? Are you kidding me?

The issue is that if you're gonna try to blame unvaccinated people for your problems, they should actually be the source of your problems - which they're not.

Well, if we look at their neighbors, Scotland, it is showing that even the proportion rate of positive case is lower with the unvaxed.

Page 38 https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/11223/22-01-19-covid...

That is a good point, but I would like to know hospital length of stay for unvaccinated vs vaccinated, as a proxy for how many resources / man hours of hospital staff they are taking up. A single unvaccinated ICU patient could be taking 10x the resources is a non ICU patient.

The data on page 7 also shows hospitalization is overwhelmingly for populations aged 60+ and up. Which is unfortunate, but I think people, parents especially, are having to decide between tradeoffs of prioritizing elderly versus benefits kids get from ending restrictions.