Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

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> Find me some actual numbers on those things you describe, and not just fear-laden imagery spread in the media and online, or I'll stick to my opinions of who is spreading BS.

So you think that the makeshift morgues and people dying in the streets was just a media operation? Hospitals were over capacity in many places, if you have a hard time believing this you really are trying to hard to ignore reality.

Here are the numbers for France, since March 2020 - https://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/datasets/synthese-des-indicateur...

All in French, but Google Translate should help you. The column you're searching for is TO (Taux d'occupation, occupancy rate). You can see it's over 1 many times, in many different regions, for weeks at a time. And this is in a country that did heavy lockdowns the first two times, and then very strict curfews (18h at one time). It doesn't matter that for people under 50 in perfect health the mortality rate is minimal - if the hospitals and emergency services are over capacity, those people can't get help for anything. And of course that's discounting the fact that even many U50s have comorbidities.

> It was quite quickly discovered that the most effective care for a Covid patient was fairly simple - bed rest, and low-flow oxygen. Healthcare was not limited by bed numbers or equipment.

And where do those beds and oxygen come from? Are they not "bed numbers and equipment"?

Your country is an unmitigated disaster managed by clowns. And even they realised that lockdowns are needed after weeks of insisting on the opposite. Why do you think that is?

Which makeshift morgues? Which people dying in the streets? Remember that video from China in early 2020, showing people literally dropping in the street? You can't be talking about that, surely.

>And where do those beds and oxygen come from? Are they not "bed numbers and equipment"?

Remember how I explained that the total number of patients treated every month in the UK since March 2020 is less than average?[1] It very clearly follows that we were not limited by beds.

>Your country is an unmitigated disaster managed by clowns.

Yet it has a Covid mortality rate per capita of around the same as most other developed countries. Admittedly a little on the high side, although the US has now overtaken the UK in recent months. Certainly about the same as France and Spain.

[1] https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/sta..., click on the link under "Provisional Monthly Hospital Episode Statistics for Admitted Patient Care and Outpatients Dashboard ", and then go to page 2 of the silly web app. Observe how the NHS runs at near 100% capacity, until March 2020, when it has run consistently less than that (and continues to do so).

In the US the treatments are absolutely limited by bed availability. And towing around a statistic like "less people are being treated" is the entire point the not shill world is trying to make. Do you know why less people are being treated? Because the beds are full of people with COVID and hospitalized COVID patients take longer to treat than most other hospital stays. So the beds are being filled and not emptied at regular rates leading to less people being treated. Maybe it's extremely different in the UK but here in the US people with your attitude are a huge problem.

Here's the data on bed availability where I live (Wales):

https://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Health-and-Social-Car...

To pick out two dates, roughly at each Covid peak:

16 Apr 2020: 3,033 general beds occupied, 3,200 general beds available. 190 ICU beds used, 204 ICU beds available.

25th Jan 2021: 7,840 general beds occupied, 1,459 general beds available. 218 ICU beds used, 49 ICU beds available.

The publicly-available statistics do not support the notion that our hospitals are in dire straights due to sheer numbers of patients, nor the idea that they were full to bursting with Covid patients. As I have said repeatedly, they were emptier than usual.

Further, denigrating anyone who disagrees with you as "shrill" does you no favours.

Edit: Hopefully you understand why I'm upset about this topic. I suffered with a very young family under effective house arrest for many months, and many further months of restrictions (some of which are ongoing), as well as the inevitable long-term effects on my country, all to "protect the NHS". As the figures clearly show, at the peak of the first wave, the hospitals were less than 50% full.

The immediate question is - what on earth else has gone wrong?

Has it occurred to you that the statistics for Wales only might not be telling the same story? How were the hospitals in England and Scotland? Considering it would be impossible to force a quarantine between them, a global UK policy wasn't a ludicrous idea. Furthermore, the point of the restrictions was to stop the exponential growth before hospitals were overwhelmed.

> Edit: Hopefully you understand why I'm upset about this topic. I suffered with a very young family under effective house arrest for many months, and many further months of restrictions (some of which are ongoing), as well as the inevitable long-term effects on my country, all to "protect the NHS

And many many others did, but don't bitch about it for months on end.

Months? I'm going to be paying for this folly, probably for the rest of my working life.

I thought you told me that we couldn't compare numbers between different countries, what with them being different and all? Wales is an especially interesting case, because we had significantly more onerous restrictions than England (and if I lived in England, I might not have such a strong opinion that the downsides of lockdowns outweigh the benefits).

As you absolutely insist though, here's the data for England:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas...

For the time period April-June 2020, overall occupancy was at 65%, compared to 90% for the same period in 2019. Some pandemic.

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