[Dumblydorr]

How was the government supposed to convince anti-vaxxers to do what they believe contains micro chips or what they believe is worse than the virus itself? This isn't on the government, this is on anti-vaxxers for swallowing garbage information, hook line and sinker.

And you didn't lose 2 years of your life. You're alive, you didn't die due to the pandemic, did you? That's much less than can be said for 5 million others, mostly older or unhealthy to begin with. They're dead because people didn't follow the guidelines early and it kept spreading and spreading.

So, be grateful you're not dead, and do your part to increase collective resilience.

[techdragon]

Two years isn’t an inconceivable time to build additional hospital capacity and attempt efforts at preventing normal causes of medial and nursing school drop outs in order to bolster the number of adequately trained medical professionals available to staff those hospitals. In fact a lot of countries have an artificial cap on the number of doctors and nurses which is driven by various medical professional associations, the government could easily have said “STFU, well take as many doctors and nurses as the universities can graduate” to these “industry self regulations”.

[chimprich]

> Two years isn’t an inconceivable time to build additional hospital capacity

The limiting factor is medical professionals, not adding buildings. You can't train a doctor in 2 years.

> preventing normal causes of medial and nursing school drop outs in order to bolster the number of adequately trained medical professionals

What's the drop-out rate? How would you "prevent" this? Do people drop out because they can't cope with the role, or some other reason? What would the overall effect of this policy be in terms of numbers? I suspect it would be minimal.

[techdragon]

I did mention the fact that in many countries the medical students are put through a course structure designed not just around individual achievement on simple academic competency, but aimed and structured sometimes explicitly capped to only graduate a fixed number of doctors. Many put forward justification for this such as “there aren’t enough placements in the field once they graduate” and other semi-valid arguments to put downward pressure on the number of doctors able to and willing to (many migrate to other non “doctor” fields after the first few years of medical school) finish a medical school education as a doctor capable of working with patients on the front line.

I’m well aware it’s not possible to train a decent doctor in two years, which is why my point was more that they could have applied positive pressure like merit based scholarship opportunities or any of a number of other ways to assist students in the second/third years of medical school to stay on track to graduate as doctors and nurses. The point is that there’s never been a shortage of people trying to become Doctors, we have social, educational and economic effects in play that limit the number of people that manage to get there all of which the governments around the world could have done things about.

[tomp]

> You can't train a doctor in 2 years

Why not? Do you really need a "doctor" to treat COVID, or just a "person trained in treating COVID and putting people on the respirator"?

Case in point, in Italy in 2020, at the peak of the first wave ("Bergamo"), they fast-tracked final year medical students. Looks like the change is permanent [1]. So clearly "you can't doctor in X years" (AFAIK 6-7 years in most of Europe) was wrong before the pandemic. We can and should do better.

[1] https://pmj.bmj.com/content/96/1137/375

[corinroyal]

Maybe if more people voted for the party that typically funds healthcare, instead of the one that tends to defund healthcare, we would be further along on hospital capacity. There's only so much democrats can do when republicans insist on opposing everything sensible just because the hated opposition supports it.

[techdragon]

That’s certainly one element of what’s happened in the USA… but I was trying to keep a more global perspective as the fact we are clearly watching the development of what may become an endemic infection like the seasonal influenza virus waves currently are makes it more clear than ever that in the long term this is a massive global issue we need to be coordinating better on.

The global nature of the situation makes any solutions focused on a single nation and their own citizens inadequate as they will just be eventually defeated by the natural mutant strains developing elsewhere. In fact “more doctors and nurses and hospital beds because we’re just going to let it happen” is the only local to national level strategy that has any long term ability to make a difference if the virus continues on its course to become endemic.

[blain]

For starters I would want my government to change the narrative. They should do their own independent research and present their own facts. Instead they blindly buy vaccines from US and repeat the agenda as everyone else.

There is way too much politics involved. Pandemic should make people naturally empathic not forced by their governments to blindly obey.

[mathverse]

>How was the government supposed to convince anti-vaxxers to do what they believe contains micro chips or what they believe is worse than the virus itself? This isn't on the government, this is on anti-vaxxers for swallowing garbage information, hook line and sinker.

This is solely on the government. It's immoral to keep vaccinated people in uncertainty and include them in any sort of lockdowns.

>And you didn't lose 2 years of your life. You're alive, you didn't die due to the pandemic, did you? That's much less than can be said for 5 million others, mostly older or unhealthy to begin with. They're dead because people didn't follow the guidelines early and it kept spreading and spreading.

This is not arguing in good faith. Healthy people in their 30s are not dying. Of all the 0.5m children infected in Israel only 200 were severe cases.

>So, be grateful you're not dead, and do your part to increase collective resilience.

I already did my part. Now my part will be attending a demo with all those "antivaxx / 5G chips believing people" and I will fight for my right to live a normal life.

[chimprich]

Threats don't disappear just because you feel the solution is inconvenient to you.

[lobocinza]

Covid is not the only threat. And what is being labeled as convenience sometimes is just physical/mental health. How I'm supposed to exercise, be healthy and productive by staying indoors all the time? Also, am I supposed to substitute IRL social activities with video calls and social media?

Don't get me wrong, I know there's some sort of middle ground but I wanted to provide food for thought.