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Comment by linuxftw | Hacker News Reader

We had to lock down because of a shortage of hospital capacity. Instead of spending money to improve that in some meaningful way, we're just throwing it away. Thanks, government.

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You think $5M will make a significant dent with regards to hospital capacity? It seems too small an amount for that end

I also don't think this is about hospital capacity but about inching the state closer to herd immunity (assuming this is possible for COVID); to me it seems a smart investment but I suppose time will tell

This is just one state. Count up all the money that's been spent on other 'awareness' propaganda, we could have built dozens of hospitals and provided scholarships for 100's of students.

Do you realize the irony in your comment? You are saying we should be building more hospital capacity instead of incentivizing people to get vaccinated. If people don't get vaccinated we will definitely be needing that capacity!

We're not locked down due to lack of vaccine, we're locked down due to hospital capacity.

If everybody had the vaccine we would not be worried about hospital capacity

Edit: Also what do you mean by locked down? Very few places are actually locked down. Where are you referring to?

Increasing hospital capacity costs a hell of a lot more than $5M.

They're spending it to increase vaccine uptake, which directly contributes to lower utilization of available hospital capacity.

Would you have rather waited until hospital capacity was overwhelmed? Spikes in hospitalizations follow - like clockwork - spikes in contagion. By the time hospitals were overrun, that'd mean you'd be looking at another two or three weeks of ever-growing number of people who'd need to be hospitalized in a system that is already at capacity.

> We had to lock down because of a shortage of hospital capacity

If we alleviated that bottleneck another would pop up at the crematorium.

Actually DeWine spent plenty preparing for the worst case scenario, including setting up overflow hospital beds for covid patients at the convention center in the capital city.

No amount of money will change what happened in the past. The #1 problem we face today is vaccine hesitancy.

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