> Most hospitals don't have all that much slack in bed capacity; especially at the tail end of flu season Remember that there's a difference between hospital b

> Most hospitals don't have all that much slack in bed capacity; especially at the tail end of flu season Remember that there's a difference between hospital beds and ICU beds. In the UK, we maintain 80% utilisation of our ICU beds all year round[0], with very little change in the number of beds available in real number terms. We have ~4100 total ICU beds, which can be expanded to ~5000 if all operating theatres, etc are shut down and used as ICU equivalent instead. While getting past flu season will help the total number of beds, it does nothing for the ICU. This is the other reason why it's increasingly important to https://www.FlattenThesCurve.com https://www.FlattenThesCurve.com and employ social distancing techniques. The rate of patients being admitted into ICUs needs to be slowed as much as possible. Once we're out of capacity, every additional patient has a much higher probability of dying than the overall fatality statistics indicate. [0] https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/03/MSitRep-SPN-v2.1-Ja7T2.pdf https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sit...