Is that really true? In the U.S., I know Seattle was briefly swamped and NYC was briefly swamped. But you are talking about a few cities being swamped for a few

Is that really true? In the U.S., I know Seattle was briefly swamped and NYC was briefly swamped. But you are talking about a few cities being swamped for a few weeks. Not the entire nation's hospitals being swamped for a few months. I remember reading that Arizona hospitals were "overwhelmed" but the only actual data I saw on that was a peak of 90% ICU capacity. There was a story about the maricopa county morgue being too full, but that turned out to be mostly bureaucratic incompetence. The problem might be inefficient load balancing on hospitals, so even if, say, 80% of ICU beds are taken, you will get some hospitals that run out of beds while others have lots of excess capacity and an inability to efficiently share the load. It would be interesting to get systematic data on this, together with some ideas on how to improve load balancing.