I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, but hyperbole isn't helpful. Occupying a hospital bed won't doom the rest of us. In any given year only a small fraction of the population gets admitted to a hospital for any reason.
"Gesamtzahl gemeldeter Intensivbetten (Betreibbare Betten und Notfallreserve" chart shows the ICU stats over time. Occupied beds are roughly a flatline around 20k, with a small 3k seasonal (covid?) variation. OTOH, the total number of available ICU beds have fallen from ~32k to ~24k, 25%. We are all nervous to see how the medical system will weather the winter covid waves, sadly the covid pandemic is far from over. But I'm confused: the data indicates the system has lost significant ICU capacity, a few times more than the seasonal (covid?) utilization variation. What is going on? Is this something Germans also openly worry about?
1. In the last wave, some hospitals reported more ICU beds than they were actually prepared to staff, because each available bed in the datasheet got them a hefty government subsidy.
2. A non-negligible number of ICU nursing staff were worked into the ground in the Winter 2020/2021 wave and decided to quit (read: move into similar jobs with less horrible working conditions). From what I hear (caution: anecdata), a lot of the remaining staff are now considering to follow them.
