> the goal here is to increase the vaccination rate
The goal is to avoid overloading the hospital system. Vaccinated people spreading the Delta variant amongst each other is not going to do that. Unvaccinated people getting sick will.
Hospitalizations in the US have increased 400% since the beginning of July, and in NYC specifically[1], they have doubled with steep positive rate-of-change.
That's not answering though about capacity. UK's went up 8x, but they were nowhere close to hitting capacity.
NYC's hospitalizations dipped to ~18 admitted/day citywide in June and are up to ~50 now. But that's a long way from 350 over winter and far away from hitting 1700 in the initial surge.
The UK government realized that even with their high case spike (to winter level) that vaccination ensured that hospitalizations would not come close, so they ended restrictions at what in retrospect was their peak cases. Their admission rate hit maybe a quarter of their winter rate even though case rate peak was similar. (vaccine cut hospitalization rate per case by 75%).
To my point, unless we're substantially different from the UK, it doesn't look like hospitalization capacity should be a concern with this wave.
> Is there evidence NYC's hospital system could be overloaded?
My friend, a plastic surgeon, was drafted to tend to an entire floor of folks on ventilators. No other doctors. Occasionally, an exhausted nurse. He spent the last twenty years doing face lifts. I think some patients were in doctor’s offices.
We also halted surgeries and cancer patients’ visits and hosts of other stuff to keep the strained system from going New Delhi.
We have inconclusive data on the protection past infection affords with respect to the Delta variant. We have decent data showing the mRNA vaccines work. We also have inconclusive but pointed data about the Delta variant being more problematic for younger people [1].
At this point when I see "comprehensive data is lacking" in some NYT article hyping the Covid threat I just close the tab. About a week ago they were trying to say children were dying in droves from the Delta wave in Indonesia based entirely on the testimony of one doctor who was probably confusing TB for Covid. Two weeks ago they were saying the J&J vaccine was useless against Delta based on a dodgy study that contradicted all sorts of real-world observations, like J&J's effectiveness against the South African variant.
We have data from Israel that with respect to Delta, "Israelis who were vaccinated were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection": https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762
@dang I'd urge you not to ban/shadow-ban my account considering I openly represent a political minority here at HN during a very turbulent time politically in the world where people are often afraid to speak up. Banning people like me would just increase the echo-chamber that already exists at HN. If my opinions were as strong in the other political direction, I'd probably be getting praised left and right.
While I agree some of my comments as of late would be considered "breaking guidelines", most of my comments are conversation provoking, and often include sources.
And FYI in this particular situation, it's pretty frustrating to see people not only make numerical claims without providing sources, but then confidently respond to being called out with an anecdotal "well my 1 doctor friend told me...." response. Only for them to be provided further false-confidence by you swooping in with the ban-hammer based on some arbitrary "site guideline".
This is definitely not the case where I live. Existing units were shifted, capacity was reserved, some makeshift isolation units built on containers were purchased. At any rate, that is a substantial cost to build out and maintain.
> The goal is to avoid overloading the hospital system
If that's the goal we need to decide what things are ok to go to the hospital for and what aren't. A lot of hospital visits could be prevented if we took the obesity epidemic seriously - I imagine the CFR of covid would be way down if America was not so obese.
And if we're ok with mandating vaccines, we should definitely be ok with mandating a healthy bodyfat %. The health gains from the latter would dwarf that of the former.
"A lot of hospital visits could be prevented if we took the obesity epidemic seriously:"
That's a lovely multi-generational idea and we should work towards it in the coming decades. Meanwhile, as 400 Americans die of a preventable illness every single day, we should prioritize reducing the hospitalization rate. Florida became the most recent state to halt surgeries at some hospitals... again.
You're missing the key distinction which is that obesity is primarily self-destruction but the virus is largely a negative externality (passing it to others, giving evolution a chance to evolve another strain). If someone has the virus and coughs in my face, that's no better than punching me in the face, which is illegal for good reason. If they eat themselves to death instead, it's no skin off my back (aside from taxes)
The goal is to avoid overloading the hospital system. Vaccinated people spreading the Delta variant amongst each other is not going to do that. Unvaccinated people getting sick will.