"What about mandating vaccines to prevent hospitals from being overrun with COVID cases?"
At this point, he inexplicably argues against vaccine mandates for health workers instead of answering the question. If you can make Covid less likely to result in hospitalization than the flu, as he readily admits the vaccine does, you can make Covid not cause hospitals to be overrun. Then you can open society completely and get all the resulting benefits. The other option is to wait for people to get natural immunity, which will take longer (on top of resulting in more deaths) because letting people get natural immunity at the same time will result in hospitals being overrun, which is what we're trying to avoid. The final option is to wait for Paxlovid availability, which avoids the hospital overrun but still has the disadvantage of needing to wait longer before you can completely open up.
For perspective: at the peak of the most deadly Covid wave, Germany's hospitals for two weeks had an average Covid share of 5%, while 95% of patients were in for other reasons.
https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateie...
> Gemessen an der vorhandenen Bettenkapazität ergibt sich eine durchschnittliche Belegungsquote von 1,3% durch COVID-19. Die höchsten tagesbezogenen Belegungsquoten gab es in der zweiten Dezemberhälfte mit knapp 5% aller Betten.
The point they made was that hospitals would/should have been able to handle the case burden without mandates.
They further argue that hospital mandates have resulted in reduced capacity, due to staffing issues. They claim that hospitals should have accepted prior infection for workers as a valid exemption, and thereby avoided firings and resignations.
> They claim that hospitals should have accepted prior infection for workers as a valid exemption, and thereby avoided firings and resignations.
This is an argument for a modified hospital worker mandate, not an argument against vaccine mandates.
Additionally, the author confuses himself further by listing a patient unable to get care because his doctor refused to see an unvaccinated patient as a harm from mandates. Removing mandates which aren't yet in place does not change who that doctor would see. On the contrary, a mandate would have solved that issue because it would mean that patient would be vaccinated.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughl...
The status of people going to hospital is largely irrelevant; the goal should be to ensure that fewer people do. We know that the government telling people to lose weight is not particularly effective, because, again, governments in the developed world have been trying for decades without much success. More direct methods (eg the sugar taxes/minimum pricing that some European countries have introduced) are looking to be a bit more effective, but you're looking at a slow. However, covid vaccines are known to be very effective, and can be given quickly, so encouraging people to get those is appropriate.
Policies to increase vaccination rates have worked spectacularly. That's why governments use them.
