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To make it more concrete: the lack of hospital capacity is one of the major reasons why COVID lockdowns lasted for so long after vaccines were available. Hosp

To make it more concrete: the lack of hospital capacity is one of the major reasons why COVID lockdowns lasted for so long after vaccines were available. Hospital capacity numbers were what politicians and bureaucrats were watching to determine when and how to ease lockdowns. If we had more excess hospital capacity, the lockdowns would have ended sooner. When hospitals routinely operate at 120% and a major crisis doubles what we ask of them, people don't get the treatment they need. I'm sure most of us have stories of friends or relations who needed hospital care during COVID and received less care than they normally would have received outside of the crisis.

reaperducer 1mo ago
When hospitals routinely operate at 120% and a major crisis doubles what we ask of them, people don't get the treatment they need. A lot of people don't realize how stretched hospitals are these days. The newspapers in Britain regularly run headlines about people waiting for hours, days, or even so long that they die on a gurney in the hallways. It's better, but still problematic in the U.S., though for different reasons. Here, a lot of people wait the hallways for hours and hours because there are simply not enough doctors, nurses, and support staff available. People look at a shiny hospital building from the outside and think it's brimming with doctors and patients. Often, it's not. There can be many unoccupied rooms in a hospital simply because there aren't enough people available to meet the standard of care required to occupy a room. That leaves patients to wait in the hallways until the next shift change, and maybe there will be enough staff available to move a patient into a room.