Acceptable Covid death rates

Any maybe some who died with suspected covid had their tests come back incorrectly as negative.

At a very basic 101 level you have two statistical measures associated with a test. One is the p-value (or significance) and one is the power of the test. There will always be a trade off between then - i.e. eliminating false positives while trying to eliminate false negatives. But they will already know, statistically speaking, what each of the figures are for those.

No one is, that's why we have restrictions which keeps the hospital numbers down. The only way to let more "acceptable" deaths occur is for the hospital system to be overrun or stop treating people, there's no 3rd option there.

Sure, go hire all the doctors and nurses needed to increase capacity during a pandemic, you have 2 weeks to do so in order to be effective and so we can reduce restrictions early. GO!

Of course, every country is currently doing this meaning that significant expansion of health services during a pandemic is a pretty difficult lever to pull on, hence restrictions instead, but post pandemic, you better be asking for higher taxes to pay for a bigger health system so we can live with less restrictions at the next worldwide pandemic.

So now you're saying do nothing?

The gamble with reducing restrictions is the hospitals get overwhelmed, they do modelling for this, you can argue the modelling is wrong but you can't really argue about the options available (increase capacity or deny treatment).

In March 2020 we shut everything down and cancelled elective surgeries so that the capacity could be used for COVID. We still have that ability but with current restrictions, case rates and hospitalisations, that capacity isn't needed. If ALL that capacity was needed, we'd be back into lockdown along with it (more likely is that a few private hospitals would cancel electives before that happened).

As I said, it's either stop treating people or have restrictions, there's no 3rd option at the moment.

That's based on modelling, you can disagree with that modelling if you want (and other threads have discussions on them), but it doesn't really answer the question of "acceptable covid death rates" given that each death takes up a hospital bed and hospital resources.

Are you saying that if we drop all restrictions, hospitals won't be overwhelmed? If you have data to back that up, we can remove all restrictions today and be done with it.

If the answer is to get extra capacity, that would need lockdowns or take a long time to get staff to run the extra capacity.

If you dont agree with an acceptable level of death, then what is the endgame? Because its not going to get any better from here.

Boosters will not make the situation any better, as based on data from those already doing boosters (Israel et al) they too have waning efficiency, and you'll end up needing a 4th. And a 5th, and so on.

So either we build up some surge capacity for the winter (because the surges are seasonal like most respiratory viruses) and live life as normal, or else we never go back to normal. Not ever. Mask wearing, social distancing, vaccine passports (that expire if you dont get your boosters) for the rest of our lives.

Covid is not going anywhere fast, so either we accept that some people will die, or we hide from it and never go back to normal.

Oh for god's sake. People go into nursing homes for just that reason - to die. Everyone dies of something eventually. And those in nursing homes are by nature, elderly, and at 'dying-age'. That is a very bald way of stating it, but it really is just a matter of human mortality. We will all die of something and the elderly and vulnerable are more at risk at all stages.

I stand by my comment. I agree, I have worded it harshly. Entering a nursing home is a one-way ticket largely. Very occasionally, people go into a home for a respite situation. They go there, however, because they are vulnerable and need a respite scenario. My point is that nursing homes are by and large centralised areas where those who are elderly/frail/vulnerable/at end-of-life go to be cared for in the final stage of their life. It is disingenuous to suggest that every 'covid-related' death that took place in nursing homes over the past 18 months or so, would not have occurred at all, but for covid. I am not particularly young, and I have had family go into, and die in, a nursing home. It is simply a fact of human society that we have nursing homes for such people and that there is a high percentage of death annually in these places. I am not denying covid either in case anyone is reading that.

The endgame is next Spring when the winter surge on hospitals abates and restrictions drop and we truly start getting back to normal.

Boosters (go get vaccinated yourself, it will help!) will help the vulnerable, new (expensive) pill treatments will help the rest. We're about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through a marathon (I reckon), it's not the time to throw in the towel.

But excess deaths cannot occur without overwhelming hospitals unless we stop treating people, those who want to allow excess deaths to occur can only do this by deciding who to treat and who not to treat. We're lucky we live in a country that doesn't treat that as a decision and just treats everybody (acknowledging that what happened in the care homes was awful and likely to be subject to an inquiry when all is said and done).

The only thing that changes this is to show a model that doesn't have restrictions that doesn't overwhelm hospitals and that doesn't exist at the moment.