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Comment by neuronic | Hacker News Reader

How is it so hard for you people to understand that we shut down society because the health system is stressed at unforeseen levels? I mean just ask your fellow emergency workers how their life is right now.

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Stressed by the numerous asymptomatic hypochondriacs you mean? [1]

I have no idea what these asymptomatic folks are wasting hospital resources for

[1] https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/ny-covid-cases-t...

The major hospitals in my (Top 10 American) metro area are currently doing patient "diversion." In practice, this means that they are not accepting most trauma patients, elective surgeries like cancer removals are being delayed, and patient care for non-Covid conditions is being impacted. This is primarily due to the hospitals being at/over capacity. These hospitals are not admitting hypochondriacs, the folks taking up the beds are sick and need to be hospitalized.

Which in turn is most likely due to bad policy rather than severe disease, e.g.

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/COVID-San-Francisco-s...

I wonder if an irrational fear of COVID makes people lose all critical thinking skills.

Much of that article is about places with high vaccination rates. The experts quoted repeat that caveat a few times.

I do not live in a state or metro with high vaccination rates.

It's not "asymptomatic hypochondriacs". "Hospitalized with no symptoms" mean they're in the hospital for other reasons and just happened to test positive.

Although, even vaccinated people hospitalized "for covid" at the moment are mostly there for things like dehydration, similar to the flu.

Just ask my close emergency worker friends and family? They're mostly unwilling to get vaccinated, understand this more than yourself, and they think it's endemic and pointless to get the vaccine. They usually bring up the fact they all have MRSA in their noses and on all their surfaces all day long and they'll get over it. They've all had COVID. Immunocompromised people will continue to die from pnuemonia, flus, etc regardless of impositions from society.

> Just ask my close emergency worker friends and family? They're mostly unwilling to get vaccinated ...

What? My uncle (father's real brother) is a doctor and he is fully vaccinated and boosted. Two other cousins are doctors are vaccinated and boosted. My wife's side of family has several in nursing and administration staff at hospitals, all of them are boosted. Most of the hospitals these folks mentioned above are associated with have fully vaccinated staff.

There is a large variance in vaccination rates among different types of healthcare workers. Rates are high among physicians but lower among nurses and aides.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7030a2.htm

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