UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

has ebbed and flowed with the virus surges...first the initial onslaught from the "Wild Type"...then from "Delta"...and now Delta + "Omicron"...throughout this pandemic, the ICU beds have been populated with Un-vaccinated patients...since the introduction of the vaccines this still true...again ~98% of those ICU cases are not vaccinated.

As for hospitalizations and charges for COVID...a) Doctors are NOT fudging their test results...that would be gross malpractice, and none of them are risking their careers to help the hospital make a few more bucks...b) the costs for COVID treatment can be quite high with several pulmonary, respiratory, infectious disease and cardiology specialists involved, along with special nursing care for those on ventilators...all this for days, weeks and even months per patient...that adds up and should be compensated...that whole mindset is a trope.

In the case of Cornell...ABSOLUTELY makes sense to shut down when 900 students suddenly test positive...virtually all of those kids will be headed to all parts of the country soon and represent threats to the unvaccinated communities they end up in. The fact that they are all vaccinated shows the transmissibility of the Omicron variant...but it also shows the vaccines' efficacy in keeping people from developing serious illness. I like that the university is requiring 10 days of isolation for those who tested positive, and assisting the others with info and guidance on how to conduct themselves when they leave (I imagine educating them on home testing, and how to spot symptoms early).

One more time...Vaccines keep people alive and out of hospital ICUs...that's a VERY BIG DEAL...and the PRIMARY reason why we have vaccines. It would be icing on the cake if we could eradicate the virus through vaccination, but that's not looking very probable, so our goal is to reduce the threat to one of "Endemic" proportions.