Speaking for myself, I have lost all patience with hospital capacity becoming a justification for any restrictions people want to force on others.
First, the reports of hospital capacity have been regularly exaggerated throughout this situation. For all the limited and short term crunch situations that have occurred there have been many more cases of demonstrated sensationalism.
And no - I am not minimizing what you or other health care types have done. But to a large degree the health care system needs to deal with it because the alternative - constantly meddling in people's lives and trying to control their decisions to reduce healthcare utilization - is not appropriate or even ethical IMO.
People get to make choices - even unhealthy ones - and the cost of that can actually be more burden on the healthcare system. Otherwise, you end up making all your healthcare decisions and mine too (and perhaps for my kids too the way many are suggesting) and that will *never happen* if I have anything to do with it.
But again the main point I made is not being addressed - that unvaccinated are not driving *positive case increases*. It is governmental-level deceit to keep saying this, designed to manipulate others with falsehoods.
Do you support POTUS wrongly saying "if you get a vaccine you will not get COVID?" Do you agree with the claim that "only the unvaccinated are causing cases to go up?"
I'm glad you're speaking for yourself, but if you can't see the problem with hospital capacity (and the additional wear and tear on the medical profession many of whom are worn out), so be it.
You're right about people making other unhealthy choices and that also effects our health system and thus all of us; more needs to be done with that problem. But I'm glad you don't have anything to do with it. You present plenty of facts and I appreciate that, but you show your biases as much as anyone else, if not more so.
Positive case increases is not the essential problem in itself. The question to me is the hospitalizations and why they are increasing where they are.
A month ago, the number of COVID patients admitted to two UF hospitals in Jax was down to 14. Now more than 140 are hospitalized with COVID and is the highest this system has seen during the pandemic. Would you care to explain that? There are other spots in the US seeing similar results are it seems to be in areas where people have been slower to get vaccinated. This doesn't mean every place with low vaccinations is having the problem, but what is the explanation for where it is happening. One of the large hospital systems in Central Florida has seen it's COVID patient load grew, over the past week, from 430 to 720. I've seen the stats you posted regarding UK but they don't tell me anything about what is happening in the US.
The doctor who is chief executive of UF Health Jacksonville says 90 percent of their COVID patients were not vaccinated and another 5 percent were not fully vaccinated. The remaining 5 percent had significant comorbidities or were on immunosuppressant drugs. I'll take that over your ranting.
I learned last year not to listen to the POTUS regarding anything medical especially regarding COVID and have continued that stance. I'm not really paying much attention to what the current POTUS says and, as I have previously said, I've had enough of politics and politicians.
It's not clear what is causing the number of cases to go up or even what is being counted as a case, so no, it's not just the unvaccinated causing the count to go up. I'm more concerned with the hospitalizations and deaths and they seem to be related to the unvaccinated. I hope this wave is temporary and we see some improvement.
