Durinng their peak earlier this year, Italian doctors were choosing who lives and who dies in the normal course of triage. That's the definition that matters to public health policy.
Secondly, that is exactly what triage is! People die, doctors are trained to decide of a group of people which are dying, who has the better chance of not dying.
I would be interested in seeing if there is data to say whether being put in the ICU actually _increased_ risk of death. Of course this would be hard to prove as only the most sick went to the ICU etc.
1) Severely reduced in-take of new patients of patients due to lack of beds available (and longer COVID recovery time)
2) Reduced ability to effectively care for other patients due to limited beds and transmissibility of the disease, and workforce reductions as healthcare workers get sick (this is not a hypothetical, this is happening in the hospital my wife and brother work at).
3) Forcing healthcare works to perform their jobs without subsequent PPE for their own protection, increasing their own health risks and creating serious issues for mental well-being when working in this environment day-in and day-out.
The healthcare system is designed to treat patients. Believing the system is not exceeding what it can handle because somehow "the system itself" is not damaged (which I'm not even sure what you mean by that) but dismissing patient care and outcomes is like evaluating a vehicle's crash rating, but not evaluating the damage to the vehicle occupants.