DrVenk wrote: ↑Wed Dec 08, 2021 8:41 pm
You cannot extrapolate data from SA onto the UK. That's not a debate. You simply cannot.
The level of prevalence is so heightened (5x) that hospitals may well experience similar demands to last year if this level of infection is causal to admission and repeated over here, even if you counter-balance it with high efficacy from a vaccine.
Rate of hospitalisations to ICU / Vents is key. Again, not a debate, because we are here to stop people dying ultimately.
The number of vent beds/ICU is a small proportion of overall beds - c 10-15% - of those being treated for/with covid. And , of course, many people who are in hospital aren't there with covid anyways so it's a far lower fraction of total occupancy. Many hospital in-patients who are very poorly would never get anywhere near an ICU bed either.
Overall though, the hospital needs to have enough beds and staff available to look after the acutely unwell, whether they have covid or not.
That is the doubt being raised here if that factor of 5 came into play, even allowing for the counter-balance of the vaccine.
The evidence is that ratio is lower.
The ratio is not being questioned; it's the absolute number of admissions that would be the concern.
The death rate is MUCH lower.
They are down certainly, but I am not sure that anyone expected them to still be running at nearly 600 a day in Germany.
So, yeah, look over there and, what, panic? No. Let's look at our data...
It's got nowt to do with panic
; it's an expectation that they would/should be doing better. That's what all these reactions are about whether it's reinstating masks, vaccine passports, WFH etc. People thought things would be more improved than they suddenly appear to be.
It's most certainly not unique to here, either. Bayern are playing Barca in an empty stadium.