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I agree it is difficult moment in history. However, remember that those 18+ Mio won’t need the beds at the same time. Still a bad situation.

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You’re right. If the 100k figure for beds is right, and each case needs to be hospitalised for a week, then we’ll be fine as long as we can drag the epidemic out over no less than 3-4 years.

The issue is not-so-slightly different.

The total number of places available in a given country in ICU's is (assuming a perfect world) the exact needed amount for "ordinary" cases + some slack, let's say 10%.

So you cannot count the total number of available beds as if they were free, as 90% (or change the percentage according to the specific country) are always, constantly, in use for patients affected by other - totally unrelated to Covid-19 - issues.

Part of these "ordinary" cases can be reduced (as an example by delaying a number of not-really-urgent surgery interventions) but this is also not without consequences.

Good call, I was treating total beds as free beds when in fact the number of free beds is somewhere between zero and 10% of that. It won't take much at all to overwhelm the available ICU resources.

If we don't reduce the current 'doubling every 7 days' growth rate, then at the end of the epidemic most of them will.

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