[tzs]

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.

[jmnicolas]

You're right but does it justify the power grab anyway? What has been done since last year about hospitals capacity?

I can tell you that in France we have less beds than last year (not sure about intensive care though) and we fired quite a lot of unvaccinated nurses.

[malermeister]

What you're suggesting basically comes down to mitigation, which we've been having a lot of issues with.

I think what we actually need is a solution, so there's nothing left to mitigate. Imo mandatory vaccinations might be just that.

[jmnicolas]

The vaccine isn't efficient enough. Look at Gibraltar: 99% are vaccinated and they're still cancelling Christmas celebrations.

[malermeister]

Vaccination isn't a binary state. Protection wanes over time. I don't know where to get the data, but I'd guess that most people in Gibraltar have been vaccinated quite a while ago.

Maybe we need tighter schedules, i.e. one shot every two months? With delta, i think that's when effectiveness starts to wane.

[tzs]

Gibraltar is having a case surge, but they are having almost no deaths [1].

[1] https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...