[dia80]

ICU load is now much lower for a given level of cases and barring new variants it will likely decrease further with boaster shots and more people recovered from infection and possible new therapeutics. Moderately increasing ICU capacity would be expensive but not vastly so. See "people in ventilator beds" in the link

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

[pessimizer]

> barring new variants

I didn't know this was an option. How do we go about doing it?

[bidirectional]

That's not what barring means. The statement is contingent on there not being new variants.

[toyg]

Which is, let's face it, extremely unlikely - and made even more so by the "laissez-faire" attitude.