What ultimately matters is if the hospitals can handle the load, delta is problematic because it produces new cases more quickly even among vaccinated and a sufficiently large number ends up in the hospital for it to become problematic. Both of these are demonstrated in Israel without invoking any kind of statistical analysis. Qualitatively the vaccine alone does not work well enough to lead to an R0 < 1, even when the most susceptible people are almost all vaccinated. I think that is super disappointing and at the same time I think it is really worrying that some politicians have not got that message in Germany / other places.
> Qualitatively the vaccine alone does not work well enough to lead to an R0 < 1
I honestly haven't seen any evidence of this.
With Alpha the attack rate for 80% of breakthrough infections was zero and the other 20% were only 1-3 cases. That's enough to drive the r0 down below 1.0 in a 100% vaccinated population. Nobody has done similar studies against delta breakthroughs.
Good thing we've had over 18 months since the start of this pandemic to add a significant number of hospital beds and nursing staff to help handle these spikes ...
I think beds and staff are repurposed when demand wanes? Closing beds and firing staff could be the interpretation of this but I don't think it shows the whole story.
