Isn't that highly subjective, however? Two people show up to the hospital feeling equally lousy, both test positive for Omicron. First guy says he's vaxxed and boosted, doc suggests he's fully protected, this is the worst of it, go home and rest up (which is exactly what a doctor told my father). Second guy says nope, I'm unvaxxed. Doc is probably going to admit this guy overnight for observation.

Multiply by tens of thousands, and you can project the effects on hospitalization stats, which aren't necessarily tied to the degree of illness.

Except that with your second example the hospital isn't going to admit the patient for simply "feeling lousy". So, no, the assertion that this is how that stat has become inflated is not the actual cause.

I think you are purposely attempting to divert from the main point. Consider "lousy" to be, say, a 102 fever, persistent cough, and inability to taste anything. And then both test positive, as I stated. The unvaxxed guy is likely to be admitted, at least for observation.

You're still not making any sense. The symptoms you describe wouldn't meet hospital admission criteria unless the patient had serious risk factors other than being unvaccinated. Hospital admission is primarily based on respiratory distress or blood oxygen saturation under 94%. A mild fever and cough can be managed on an outpatient basis. Ageusia is clinically irrelevant.

Perhaps, although that's assuming every doctor in every ER at every hospital in the country has the same minimum criteria. Somehow, I doubt that is the case.

What's your point? You might be able to find a few doctors who fail to follow the protocol but that has no measurable impact on the healthcare system.

It seems like you don't have any actual knowledge of how healthcare works in the real world and are just making things up.

Point is doctors are not robots, they enjoy a significant amount of autonomy, and I still believe that all other things being equal, many doctors are more likely to admit an unvaxxed Covid-positive patient than a vaxxed Covid-positive, because they believe that the unvaxxed patient has a higher risk of more serious symptoms.

So you have a belief, but no actual data or even anecdotes to back it up.

Nearly half of Omicron admissions released a day later. Did they magically recover overnight, or were they admitted with mild symptoms in the first place, just as a precautionary measure?

Early data from France suggests omicron patients leave hospital far more quickly - including 43 per cent in less than a day

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...

(at Kaiser Permanente Southern California) Among 154 Omicron variant-infected patients who completed hospitalization by January 1, 2022, 129 (83.8%) were discharged in ≤2 days

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v...

If that was the case the doctors would see that the vaxed getting admited would have a higher death rate than the unvaxed as they would only admit those most likely to die from that group. If they did have a higher death rate then the stats and the doctors experience would reflect that and so the doctors would not heavily select for the unvaxxed. Though there is the possibility in your hypothetical that even the vaxxed with worse symptoms on average than the admitted unvaxed have a better chance of survival than a less symptomatic (when admitted) unvaxxed but if that's the case it pretty much shows the doctor are behaving correctly in a 'bias' of admitting unvaxxed.

The fact that "lousy" is subjective in the examples given, and is being leveraged to make your point however you see fit, at least to me, discredits the point you're attempting to make.

Source? That might mean we’re approaching herd immunity and critical mass for vaccinated people in the population, which would be fantastic.

8% of the population in the paper are not vaccinated.

27% of hospitalizations are not vaccinated.

~50% of ICU cases are not vaccinated.

The conclusion is that people are bad at understanding statistics.

The labeling for the data is tricky. If you don't actually dive in you will miss it.

8% are not vaccinated at all.

27% are not vaccinated, partially vaccinated or unknown status

50% of the ICU cases are not vaccinated, partially vaccinated or unknown status.

It is good to understand that 1/2 of the people who come into the ICU are reported as unknown vaccine status by default because they can't speak or fill out paperwork.

I use to produce these reports for this government and the ones before for years . Presenting facts a certain way is what happens and reports get rescoped when the data doesn't agree with the intended outcome.

8% of the population has had no vaccination at all and 27% of hospitalized have had no vaccination at all. The unvaccinated and hospitalized population is THREE TIMES higher than it should be. That is the story in this report.

> I use to produce these reports for this government and the ones before for years . Presenting facts a certain way is what happens and reports get rescoped when the data doesn't agree with the intended outcome.

Are you saying the numbers presented in this report are not accurate or were fudged in some way?

I don't think you should lump unknown and unvaxxed. It creates a false impression. ICU numbers would look different. Most people in the ICU are unknown.

I could go on about hospital visits for non covid reasons being lumped with covid hospital visits.

I have issues with how data is collected in the field. I have issues with the reclassifications that go back and claim covid killed this patients after dying of other reasons.

I have issues with what they decide to collect and what information they ignore.

The same source gives roughly 60/40 for hospitalizations and 50/50 for ICU, so the more severe the symptoms the more vaccinations help.

The ICU stat is tricky. They classify anyone who they don't know their vax status as non-vaxxed. Many people who come into the ICU can't speak, fill out paperwork. They are classified as non-vaxxed. By the time they recover enough to share their status they get transferred out of the ICU.

Probably the most misleading stat of them all.

If somebody comes in the ICU with COVID symptoms, it's extremely likely that they were hospitalized earlier and thus their vaccination status is known.

If somebody comes in the ICU without non-COVID symptoms, they aren't in the statistic, in other words you need to make the probability of "unknown status" conditional on being in the ICU for COVID.

I would like a source, but still: no need to even ask me, as it's exactly the case I mention in the last paragraph.