Meh. If it's like in France there's a lot of dramatization: we got an official report about last year: COVID represented 2% of all hospitalizations and 5% of intensive care.
Well, it's not like in France, so I don't see your point. Hospitals in Salzburg and Österreich can't treat emergency patients properly anymore for lack of capacity. Also year round numbers won't help you if the cases are clustered.
numbers for a year aren't hugely useful. The issue is the concurrent rate, not the annual rate.
I'm in Ireland - the numbers given on Wednesday were 15 ICU beds free nationwide, with 40% of beds being used by covid patients.
An easy month and a tough month might average out over the year, it doesn't actually help anyone if there's a lack of beds during the tough month.
It's like the "HN hug of death" - if your server fell over when you needed it, it doesn't matter if you got no visitors for the rest of the year. The average is irrelevant.
The "HN hug of death" is a sign that your infrastructure is not adequate.
A regular flu year was 1.5% hospitalization. We're drowning with .5 more after years and years of reducing hospitals capacity.
I can't comment on Ireland I don't know the situation but I'd bet it's the same than in France: not enough beds when something is a bit out of the ordinary.
There is probably a wave of hospitalizations now like every year with the flu. When you average on a year it won't be as bad and won't justify trampling civil liberties.
It's just a power grab IMHO and people are so afraid of COVID they just go along. But sadly we won't get our freedoms back once all this is over.
A hurricane doesn't raise the average wind speed for the year at your house by much. Yet you can't ignore it.
If I were to press the business end of my soldering iron onto your hand it would only raise the average amount of thermal energy that your hand absorbs this year by a negligible amount. Yet I'm pretty sure you would very strongly object.
Hospitals in many areas are being overwhelmed to a far greater extent than they are in even bad flu years. When you are going to need a hospital for something in the future that you can be flexible with scheduling, then you just need a hospital that on average has enough capacity. When you need a hospital now with no flexibility in timing, all that matters is if demand now is above what the hospital can serve.