Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
I'm not saying that more vaccinations aren't a good thing, but with the way COVID spreads, bumping the vaccination rate for people in their 20s or 30s will only really have a fairly minimal effect on hospitalizations when there are still hundreds of thousands of people in age ranges that have 10-30% hospitalization rates that are sitting unvaccinated.
And in Alberta, the adult age cohorts that have seen the biggest increase in cases since the start of this month have been the older groups:
20-29: 2.74x
30-59: 3.47x
60-79: 5.73x
80+: 9.5x
When you need about 30-50 cases among 20-29 year olds to match the hospitalization risk of 1 case among 60-79 year olds, it's pretty clear where the risk lies. Even just bumping the vaccination rate among 50+ year olds to UK levels would have vastly more impact on hospitals than vaccinating every single person under 40. If vaccine passports aren't going to do that, then there needs to be even more coercive measures for the at-risk population, because that unvaccinated 50+ group is essentially what stands between living relatively normally with a functional healthcare system and not having that.
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There just aren't 100s of thousands of unvaccinated people in the 60+ demographic in AB. In most cases the population is 90% fully immunized and you're simply not going to get that number to 100% for a variety of reasons. Even in the 50-60 range, there are simply not 100s of thousands unvaccinated either, with AB sitting at just over 80% uptake with 2nd dose numbers rising every day.
The 19-35 demo in the province is the clear issue that is leading to the cases spreading into the younger and older populations as they do have the 100s of thousands of unvaccinated remaining, and are the ones spreading the virus by being the most being socially active.
The Increase rates you list are pretty meaningless as well since the caseload in the younger demographics wouldn't have increased as much having higher caseloads to begin with months prior (and for most of the spring).
There is certainly a point to be made that 19-35 is far less likely to suffer severe illness, however, limiting spread and the need to shut down business again should be the goal. To do this right, you don't target a few thousand remaining boomers who are for the most part living in a smaller bubble to begin with. You put out a vaccine passport to make life incredibly difficult on the selfish citizens still not getting the jab that think the worst outcome of Covid is that they feel bad for a day or two. More often than not they still don't consider passing this along to someone who may die or become seriously ill. Vaccinated or not.
The evidence is clear across the provinces and countries willing to put out a passport. Uptake immediately increases significantly, and will in turn keep many more people safe and the provinces open.