ICUs in Germany are nearing capacity, and doctors are preparing to apply a triage system. Cases are surging to the point that the health minister predicts, "Probably by the end of winter everyone in Germany will be vaccinated, cured, or dead. That sounds cynical, but that is the reality." He went on to say that the Delta variance makes this prediction very probable. Calling a spade a spade? Hyperbole or reality? Germany has not ruled out a national lockdown like the one its neighbor Austria has instituted.
It's not hard to see the rationale for the Austrian lockdown. The incidence rate in Austria hit 1,107 per 100,000 and there are over 3,000 patients in a hospital. For comparison, the incidence rate in Germany is 409.2 per 100,000; in the UK it is 422.7 per 100,000. Under the lockdown, Austrians can leave home to go to work, shop for essentials, or exercise. Schools are open, but parents have been urged to keep children at home whenever possible. Also recommended is working from home. Sixty-eight percent of Germans and 66 percent of Austrians are fully vaccinated, but virologists and epidemiologists say those numbers are not high enough to keep the pandemic under control. If those percents aren't enough, let's not talk about our 59 percent in the US.
US cases have risen 30 percent this month, but the coming of colder weather is not one of the causes. If it were, the pattern of surging cases would look very different. Canada and the northern states in the US would have surged before more southern states, and that has not happened. A University of Minnesota epidemiologist notes that there is more that scientists do not know about how coronavirus spreads than they do know. Minnesota and Washington are two states that keep very detailed data on cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. In Minnesota, the death rate for fully vaccinated people under the age of 50 during the Delta surge was 0.0 per 100,000. Some people did die, but not enough to round the 0.0 up to one. The most recent report out of Washington did not even include a death rate for fully vaccinated residents under the age of 65. In Minnesota the average weekly hospitalization rate for vaccinated residents ages 18 through 49 during the Delta surge was one per 100,000. All that said, for people in their 80s or 90s, covid appears to be more dangerous than typical flu.
Covid cases in children are up 32 percent from two weeks ago. In the week ending November 4, there were 107,000 such cases; for the November 11 - 18 week, there were 140,000. The number of cases for people under the age of 18 is about one-fourth of the national total. People under the age of 18 make up about 22 percent of the population. Despite data that show vaccines are far safer than covid, three in 10 parents still say that they will definitely not get the vaccine for their children ages five through 11. Another three in 10, though, say they'll get their children vaccinated "right away."
South Korea shut down a religious facility after 210 of the 427 residents tested positive. At least 191 of the 210 were unvaccinated. Cases have surged in South Korea in the past two weeks, but are still relatively low, with five daily cases per 100,000 people. That compares with 29 daily cases in the US and 36 in Singapore. ICUs in and around Seoul are at about 77 percent capacity.
I've been thinking about the vaccinated, cured, or dead comment in the opening paragraph, what the world would look like if at some precise time all the unvaccinated people (except for children too young to be vaccinated) just vanished. The coronavirus rapture, perhaps, where all the unvaccinated are swept up into wherever unvaccinated people would go? Where would we go from there in a science fiction story? As I type that, I also consider what things might be like if it were the vaccinated and recovered who are swept up, leaving the unvaccinated behind. What sort of society would continue or evolve in either case?
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