Or just vaccinate. Cheaper and better. (Try estimating the price of enough hospitals, employees and of course the sick leave for the patients. Then multiply with x in case people contract covid several times during life.)
Obviously, increasing hospital capacity is not a short term solution to Covid. It will, however, mitigate the next pandemic and help in bad flu seasons.
If the reason for lockdowns was "flattening the curve" to not swamp hospitals, then we could have avoided lockdowns if hospitals had been able to absorb the increase in patients.
"On July 5 1948 the National Health Service took control of 480,000 hospital beds in England and Wales. An estimated 125,000 nurses and 5,000 consultants were available to care for hospital patients."
"By 1952 the situation improved, figures show there were 245,000 whole time equivalent nurses."
> If the reason for lockdowns was "flattening the curve" to not swamp hospitals, then we could have avoided lockdowns if hospitals had been able to absorb the increase in patients.
No, because you have exponential growth without lockdowns. You cannot have exponential increase in hospital beds. And, obviously, by "bed" we mean "team of qualified, registered, trained, health care professionals".