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Now, to bring this full circle. Why is it bad to have overwhelmed hospital systems? Because then stuff like this (https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/569834-veteran-dies-of-treatable-illness-after-waiting-hours-for-icu-bed) doesn't happen. But Kip, if only there was a way to reduce the COVID burden on hospitals?!?!?! There is, get vaccinated. It's over 90% efficacious against hospitalization due to COVID. Nobody is trying to "vaccinate a respiratory illness away". Nobody gives a s*** whether you have the flu. They do, however, care if there are so many flu patents in the hospital that care cannot be adequately provided to everyone else. Public health officials are trying to vaccinate hospitalizations due to the illness away. And it ABSOLUTELY CAN be done. Just get your vaccine (and heaven forbid, maybe a booster shot too), then if you get COVID you won't end up in the ICU. The more you know.

Would like to add that Boustedt also was the head of the Swedish National development program for a long time starting in 2002. And if you look at the prospects coming out of Sweden for the last 10-15 years I would say he was fairly succesfull in that role. A good hire!

1. Saying masks dont work is false. They decrease the amount of droplet and aerosol transmissions from the person wearing it. That is fact. They are not filters designed to protect the person wearing it. They certainly do not stop transmission from person to person, but they do decrease the chances of transmission and decrease the amount if viral load being transmitted. That decreases the severity of the illness, which is also the point of wearing a mask. You can argue the efficacy of masks, but a blanket statement that they do nothing, is just not true. It's basic physics. Wrap a bandana around the end of a hose a spray someone from 6 feet away. Then remove the bandana and spray them again at the same distance. In both scenarios, the person gets wet. But the first scenario results in much less water hitting the person and decreases the distance needed to get sprayed. If your goal is to stay dry, that strategy will fail. But if your goal is to decrease the amount of spray hitting you and decrease the amount of distance needed for transmission, then even a flimsy bandana will accomplish this. 2. Occupancy limits already exist in every confined space as per fire codes. The chances of a fire happening are way less than getting CoVid, but no one threw a fit when the "guvmint" created them. 3. There is a big difference between forcing a syringe into someone's arm and forcing someone to wear a mask indoors or isolate themselves when they are sick or likely to be. So it is reasonable to support one mandate and not another. 4. Vaccines are primarily designed to protect the person being vaccinated. While a vaccinated person can still contract the disease and spread it to others, they are less likely to do so then someone without any kind of naturalized immunity. This is fact. If the idea is to decrease transmission, then vaccination is one way to do that. People can still spread disease with their hands, but you would be foolish to argue against hand washing because they can still become contaminated later. And vaccine mandates for healthcare workers is nothing new. Most facilities already required TDaP, MMR, HBV, and Varicella vaccinations before even being hired. Some places even require flu vax. No one cried about that when being hired. But now we need a whambulance inside the hospital too.

I am somewhere in the middle. Mask and social distance mandates and occupancy limits are fine. Quarantine mandates too. I draw that line at forcing businesses to shut down over it as long as reasonable precautions are taken. An essential business is just too subjective of a term, and if a business is not essential, the cautious wont go in there anyway. As much as I encourage getting the shot, a mandate to do so is just wrong. Incentivizing it is fine. Requiring vaccination among health care workers is reasonable too. But forcing everyone is just too far.

Here's a pretty good journal article I just found on the topic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3840149/ Pre-pandemic the researchers found that "at any given time, approximately two thirds of ICU beds are occupied, and approximately one third of these beds are occupied by patients requiring mechanical ventilation". So that seems like your baseline, but I'm not an epidemiologist (not that anybody would listen to me if I were).