[qwerty456127]

Politicians say this all the time. I doubt anything we can do can change this. Just build more hospitals. We have resolved the masks shortage, we will resolve the shortage of ventilators and hospitals also. We can even soften the shortage of medical personnel by directing the unemployed to paid full-time medical boot camps.

I understand this is much easier said than done but we hardly have a choice if we actually want to do something useful.

[nradov]

There was never a real ventilator shortage. Doctors figured out quickly that mechanical ventilation does more harm than good for the vast majority of COVID-19 patients. It's only used on a few percent of hospitalized patients now.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/nhcs/intubation-ventilator-...

[001spartan]

Building more hospitals is a long-term process. Training medical personnel is a long-term process. Emergency measures intended to bridge the gap are untenable politically, and people are dying because of it. Thousands of them per day.

The answer to this is not to say 'we can't fix the underlying issues right now, so we're not going to do anything'. The answer is to take measures that we _can_ implement until those longer-term solutions can come into play.

[N1H1L]

> Building more hospitals is a long-term process. Training medical personnel is a long-term process. Emergency measures intended to bridge the gap are untenable politically, and people are dying because of it. Thousands of them per day.

It's like the whole chip shortage thing. Most people ask why aren't we building more chip-building plants? The answer is we are doing that, but it takes billions of dollars and a lot of trained manpower to set up such a factory, and all of that takes a lot of time.

These are what are called in economics as highly inelastic supplies, which it seems is unknown to many commentators, who BTW have a habit of quoting Econ 101 in every discussion.

[qwerty456127]

What measures we can implement doesn't matter if these measures don't work.

[001spartan]

Vaccines work. Vaccinated people are far less likely to contract COVID, and when they do they are far less likely to require healthcare resources beyond the standard treatments for someone who has the flu (stay home, rest, treat symptoms as needed).

Social distancing and masking work. They reduce the possibilities for spread between people -- not perfectly, but enough to reduce it to a manageable level for our current healthcare resources.

Saying that our current measures to combat the virus don't work is disingenuous at best, and a blatant disregard for everything we've learned from the past year and a half at worst.

[qwerty456127]

> Vaccines work.

I have always been a vaccine enthusiast but now I see infection surging even in the most vaccinated areas.

> masking work

I have always been saying this, even when officials denied. Yes, mandatory masks in public transport and grocery stores are the only of all the deployed measures I recognize as actually working.

> blatant disregard for everything we've learned from the past year and a half at worst.

I actually don't think we have learnt much.

[001spartan]

The vaccines are not failing. They are incredibly effective at preventing infections _and_ reducing severity of breakthrough infections. The Delta variant is more easily transmitted and more likely to cause breakthrough infections, but that does not account for the majority of the surge [0]. It's largely a surge amongst unvaccinated populations, buoyed by a smaller proportion of breakthrough infections. The ease with which Delta spreads, combined with relaxed restrictions on gatherings and masking, accounts for the surge in infections.

Despite the decline in vaccine effectiveness (I've seen conflicting studies of how much this has changed), they're still incredibly effective compared to any other protection we have at the moment.

None of this changes the fact that people are going to continue to die until a higher proportion of the population receives a COVID vaccine -- and that we _can_ mitigate this through other measures. None of these things lead me to the conclusion that we should return to normal and accept an increased healthcare system burden and death rate.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e1.htm?s_cid=mm...

[drunner]

> I have always been a vaccine enthusiast but now I see infection surging even in the most vaccinated areas.

https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/covid-19-vaccine-breakthrou...

    The reported share of COVID-19 cases among those not fully vaccinated ranged from 94.1% in Arizona to 99.85% Connecticut.


    The share of hospitalizations among those with COVID-19 who are not fully vaccinated ranged from in 95.02% in Alaska to 99.93% in New Jersey. (Note: Hospitalization may or may not have been due to COVID-19.)


    The share of deaths among people with COVID-19 who are not fully vaccinated ranged from to 96.91% in Montana to 99.91% in New Jersey. (Note: Deaths may or may not have been due to COVID-19.)

[boredumb]

*may or may not have been due to COVID-19

How is this data useful what so ever? I don't particularly care if someone in a car accident was or was not vaccinated unless Pfizer has came up with an MRNA based seat belt recently. If anything this data just muddies up the waters further.

[nanis]

> (Note: Hospitalization may or may not have been due to COVID-19.)

[gunshai]

My company had out local health official come to our town hall meeting at talk. About covid.

Over 94% of patients are unvaccinated... It's pretty clear in my mind what's happening here.

[jrockway]

If medical boot camps are as effective as Javascript boot camps... you may want to wait a while before exposing yourself to other people's germs.

[tharne]

> If medical boot camps are as effective as Javascript boot camps... you may want to wait a while before exposing yourself to other people's germs.

This line made me both laugh and cry a little.

[spiderice]

This is an incredibly bad faith argument. There is a whole lot of room between a 6 week bootcamp and a 12 year medical program. I'm pretty confident someone would learn to treat Covid patients in 2 years.

edit: your comment did make me laugh though. So perhaps you were just going for humor, in which case you succeeded and I apologize for being a wet blanket.

[zzt123]

So, the initial job will get done, but please don’t look under the covers, and please do not attack it with anything infectious?

Might be better than having nothing, in the case of ICUs being overwhelmed and overcapacitied.

[vanattab]

Lol homeless people with scalpels what could go wrong?

[qwerty456127]

Besides hardcore homeless drunkards there is a sufficient population of totally reasonable people who have just lost their jobs because of the crisis and can totally do nurse/paramedic job if taught for free and supported financially. I would steadily go for this if I had lost my job.