Pandemics in particular stress the system a lot because normally events the push hospitals to their limits are fairly localized and hospitals can borrow workers

Pandemics in particular stress the system a lot because normally events the push hospitals to their limits are fairly localized and hospitals can borrow workers from elsewhere to fill out the staff. That happened early in 2020 in the US, some nurses made good money going from place to place as areas peaked in the early days of COVID. Private hospitals in particular are never going to be particularly amenable to keeping the kind of slack that would be required to handle a pandemic. They barely keep enough staff for normal operations.