Edit: /s because apparently that is necessary.
See https://twitter.com/DellAnnaLuca/status/1486208081142947840/...
Also, the whole ICU capacity percentage numbers inducing so much fear and panic are very misleading. ICU capacity isn’t static it can be adjusted up and down. So saying ICU is at 98% capacity utilization is meaningless because it could be very well possible that ICU beds can be added and now ICU capacity is 75% utilization.
Vaccines are shown to reduce cases of serious symptoms and hospitalization. Yes, even if everyone is vaccinated is possible for hospitals to still be overwhelmed if infections spread too quickly (hence things like distancing still being important), but even in that case, you’d have less people needing hospital attention that are unable to get it.
The overall goal of our societies, as I see it, is returning to living our lives as normal and killing the fewest people in the process. Reducing hospitalization rates means that more exposure can safely happen before hospitals are at risk. When they come close to being overwhelmed, additional restrictions on gathering will probably need to be reemployed until the risk subsides again.
These risks are also very local (more local than state) and personal. So it’s perfectly reasonable for the pandemic to “be over” for some where the risk is low, yet not for some where the risk remains high.
Even during the height of a COVID surge, the total hospitalizations is maybe 20% higher than normal. Also note that as COVID hospitalizations increase, regular hospitalizations decrease. This is a consequence of the dishonest reporting criteria encouraged by the CDC; people are hospitalized for unrelated reasons but happen to test positive for COVID so are counted as a COVID patients instead of regular patients. See, for instance: https://www.dailywire.com/news/massachusetts-now-differentia....
You can also web search for hospitals being overwhelmed by the flu. In a few minutes I found this happening in two different years: 2018 and 2000. The reality is that hospitals get overwhelmed very easily for a number of reasons. Even if you vaccinated everyone in the U.S., they would still get overwhelmed during surges. In other countries with higher vaccination rates, hospitals still get overwhelmed and primarily with vaccinated people: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...
The reality is that this pandemic is over as soon as we make it over. My family has been living a normal life since October 2020.