[Arnt]

These are the options:

1. Vaccinate LOTS of people.

2. Accept that the hospitals are full of covid patients, so people who break a leg can't get a bed.

Option 2 isn't very desirable. It only took months to find some vaccines that make option 1 clearly better than option 2. (Some other vaccines failed, but you don't hear about those.)

[forgingahead]

Option 1 isn't viable though - see the UK, Israel, and Singapore for the latest news. They are highly vaccinated, 85% of total population (meaning over 90%+ of the eligible), and the hospital systems are still straining to capacity, resulting in more restrictions and the current scramble for boosters.

I think we have to face the reality that vaccines won't stop this, and the only way out is after this burns through everyone. Vaccines can help reduce personal impact on severity but doesn't seem to be helping the hospital load problem.

[Arnt]

It may not be viable in theory, but I see it working in practice here.

I live in Munich, Germany. The load on hospitals decreased as vaccination proceeded. Right now, the areas southeast of the city have the highest 7-day incidence in Germany, and even there can still grow by a factor of 4-5 before the hospitals are troubled.

[a0-prw]

Option 3. Improve the hospital system to have greater capacity.

[dzhiurgis]

Nursing degree takes 3 years minimum...

[a0-prw]

Better start today, then.

[Arnt]

Or just vaccinate. Cheaper and better. (Try estimating the price of enough hospitals, employees and of course the sick leave for the patients. Then multiply with x in case people contract covid several times during life.)

[Uberphallus]

It's still trying to solve linearly a problem that propagates exponentially.

[a0-prw]

Obviously, increasing hospital capacity is not a short term solution to Covid. It will, however, mitigate the next pandemic and help in bad flu seasons.

If the reason for lockdowns was "flattening the curve" to not swamp hospitals, then we could have avoided lockdowns if hospitals had been able to absorb the increase in patients.

"On July 5 1948 the National Health Service took control of 480,000 hospital beds in England and Wales. An estimated 125,000 nurses and 5,000 consultants were available to care for hospital patients."

"By 1952 the situation improved, figures show there were 245,000 whole time equivalent nurses."

Source: https://www.nursingtimes.net/archive/the-birth-of-the-nhs-ju...

In 1948 the population of the UK was under 50 million. In 2020 it was over 65 million.

Source: https://www.closer.ac.uk/data/estimated-annual-population/

"The total number of hospital beds in the UK is 170,548, correct at the time of publishing this article in April 2020."

Source: https://www.interweavetextiles.com/how-many-hospital-beds-uk...

The number of nurses in the UK: "Over the last year (April 2019 to April 2020) the number of nurses has gone up by 13,502: from 282,506 to 296,008."

Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nhs-nurse-numbers-continu...

[DanBC]

> If the reason for lockdowns was "flattening the curve" to not swamp hospitals, then we could have avoided lockdowns if hospitals had been able to absorb the increase in patients.

No, because you have exponential growth without lockdowns. You cannot have exponential increase in hospital beds. And, obviously, by "bed" we mean "team of qualified, registered, trained, health care professionals".

[dzhiurgis]

So I assume you are a medical worker already?