> - Are the unvaccinated actually the majority of the covid related cases (as far as I'm aware, yes).
They needn't be a majority. The mandate acts to reduce strain on the hospital, so ask whether it achieves that (I think the answer is yes)
> - Are unvaccinated hospitalizations significantly worse compared to other personal decisions (diet, exercise, risky hobbies).
It is harder to fix these than getting a jab.
> - Finally, what actions, if any, should be taken to correct the hospital load? (nothing, vaccine mandates, accelerated hospital expansion, turning people away, etc)
An alternative would be to charge unvaccinated people a premium on hospital costs, as I'm sure health insurance providers would be keen to do.
> > - Are the unvaccinated actually the majority of the covid related cases (as far as I'm aware, yes).
> They needn't be a majority. The mandate acts to reduce strain on the hospital, so ask whether it achieves that (I think the answer is yes)
Majority is very important here. If vaccinated and non-vaccinated people were hospitalized at equal rate (or even at a rate where more vaccinated were hospitalized) a vaccine mandate isn't exactly going to do anything.
But I now realize that I gave "vaccine works" as a prerequisite, so this bullet point is redundant.
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> > - Are unvaccinated hospitalizations significantly worse compared to other personal decisions (diet, exercise, risky hobbies).
> It is harder to fix these than getting a jab.
Likely, but hard to say definitively without data, and I know I don't have such data on hand. I talk about it a bit more in another reply better, but many things are even easier than getting 3 jabs. They only require inaction.
My ultimate question on this point is, why do we accept certain lifestyle injuries but not this? Ease of avoidance is a good reason, but I would like to see it compared to other lifestyle injuries.
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> > - Finally, what actions, if any, should be taken to correct the hospital load? (nothing, vaccine mandates, accelerated hospital expansion, turning people away, etc)
> An alternative would be to charge unvaccinated people a premium on hospital costs, as I'm sure health insurance providers would be keen to do.
I'm not against such an idea at all if it would solve the problem. The high-level issue is that the unvaccinated are costing the system more money / capacity than the vaccinated, so they should pay for it.
However, there is a lack of capacity, not necessarily a lack of funding. If the unvaccinated are charged more, will they actually have a lesser impact on capacity, or will capacity still be reached just with them paying more money? Which then circles back to needing more capacity. Who pays for the extra capacity is almost a separate discussion in itself.
They needn't be a majority. The mandate acts to reduce strain on the hospital, so ask whether it achieves that (I think the answer is yes)
> - Are unvaccinated hospitalizations significantly worse compared to other personal decisions (diet, exercise, risky hobbies).
It is harder to fix these than getting a jab.
> - Finally, what actions, if any, should be taken to correct the hospital load? (nothing, vaccine mandates, accelerated hospital expansion, turning people away, etc)
An alternative would be to charge unvaccinated people a premium on hospital costs, as I'm sure health insurance providers would be keen to do.