The city-state’s Ministry of Health reported last month that about 100,000 people aged 60 and above were yet to be vaccinated despite having been in the priority category.
There was a new daily high of 18 deaths in Singapore on Wednesday - as well as a near record 3862 new cases - and the unvaccinated elderly accounted for more than two-thirds of patients who had passed away from the virus or were in the ICU, Health Minister and fellow taskforce co-chair Ong Ye Kung said.
“For the unvaccinated seniors in their 60s, our data shows one in four will require oxygen, ICU care or will succumb,” he said.
> one in four will require oxygen, ICU care or will succumb,
Note how this is deliberately constructed to scare the bejesus out of people. It's like saying "one in four will pick their nose, have explosive diarrhea, or blow their head off with a shotgun". If you don't read carefully enough, which most people don't, you'll be misled into thinking a bunch of people are about to die (rather than ruin their porcelain throne for the day), but they have plausible deniability. "We just didn't phrase it quite right". This does not improve public trust in vaccines _at all_.
Do we need folks 60+ to voluntarily vaccinate? Yes. No doubt about it. But _this is not the way_ to achieve that goal. Transparency and persuasion is how you do it, not verbal tricks like that.
Singapore has about 1650 isolation beds and 200 ICU places. 25000 people older than 60 (1 in 4 figure from the article) can easily overwhelm this capacity.
Even if that math works, we've been dealing with this for nearly 2 years, and it was clear right from the start the disease would end up endemic. Surely that's enough time to build capacity, or at least procure temporary capacity in neighboring countries? It's not like you need a ton of expensive equipment to care for a COVID patient. It's not a tumah.
When a person can no longer survive breathing on their own, the anesthesiologist is called on to intubate them. After that you have the anesthesiologists monitoring all intubated patients. There is no surplus of anesthesiologists anywhere.
The city-state’s Ministry of Health reported last month that about 100,000 people aged 60 and above were yet to be vaccinated despite having been in the priority category.
There was a new daily high of 18 deaths in Singapore on Wednesday - as well as a near record 3862 new cases - and the unvaccinated elderly accounted for more than two-thirds of patients who had passed away from the virus or were in the ICU, Health Minister and fellow taskforce co-chair Ong Ye Kung said.
“For the unvaccinated seniors in their 60s, our data shows one in four will require oxygen, ICU care or will succumb,” he said.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/singapore-s-recovery-stall...