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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

The primary issue causing that we keep having to lockdown is that hospitals only have a limited number of ICU beds (not physical but trained staff to operate them). Once full, all others such as traffic accident victims can't be treated. There is no way to quickly get more certified ICU beds at least if you want them at the standards expected.

71% of people in the ICU in Zürich, Switzerland are unvaccinated [1]. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated even if the vaccinated can spread the virus, the ICU beds are full because of the unvaccinated.

[1] https://www.zh.ch/content/dam/zhweb/bilder-dokumente/themen/...

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I debunked this in a dupe thread, where someone has similar claims about Minnesota, the actual hospital occupancy rate was 10%. The total covid utilization of Zurich ICU units is 14.6%. 71% of 14.6% is 10.3%. Not great, but a far cry from alarmist statements like "traffic accident victims can't be treated", when 7.5% of Zurich ICU beds are still unused, and 20% ICU beds are free in Switzerland overall.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29290732

https://www.covid19.admin.ch/en/hosp-capacity/icu

Nothing to debunk. The 71% was clearly meant regarding cases of covid not total ICU beds. I didn't say the ICUs were already full. They are starting to fill up. We don't have a lock down at this time but if the numbers keep going up we will have no choice.

Either way it's a pandemic of the unvaccinated irregardless if the hospitals are full or not.

That’s not a great argument when we’re firing health workers left and right.

Also we had two years to expand our ICU’s. What happened?

It takes at least 2 years to train them and like you said. The job sucks, underpaid, too many hours etc. That is why the vote on the 28th for better working conditions will pass [1].

[1] https://www.srf.ch/news/abstimmungen-28-november-2021/pflege...

>Also we had two years to expand our ICU’s. What happened?

You seem to think that governments are interested in actually spending money to stop the virus. They're not or they can't.

Are all vaccinated getting tested in Züri hospitals? How many hospitalized COVID-19 cases have severe acute respiratory symptoms? Age breakdown? Health status? Population representative data? Historic data on hospital capacity?

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