It’s absolutely true that ICU capacity generally runs at 90% utilisation - ICU beds are bloody expensive (staffing etc). In NSW, Australia, where I live and work (and have worked in ICU) there is a statewide ICU service so if you need a bed and you’re on the other end of the state you can end up getting transferred 1500 km to be in one.

Having said that about utilisation, what pandemic beds requirements meant in the rest of the world and would have meant here is that no elective surgeries could be performed; leukaemia/cancer patient stem cell/marrow transplants couldn’t go ahead and trauma victims risked not being able to be cared for. This was absolutely the case in the UK during the height of things (friends are ortho/trauma surgeons over there and ended up working as assistants in nursing for 3-4 weeks in January).

So, with increase in ICU bed availability through adding new beds and with stopping any potential procedures that would electively require an ICU bed for recovery countries were able to basically meet demands (although many of my emergency colleagues in the UK reported having to determine who was going to be for ICU or not - ie top level care was not offered to some people during the height due to lack of resources) - there is now a massive backlog of patients requiring their baseline care to be fulfilled.

For example, another of my colleague’s mothers is a (retired) dermatologist in London. She was pulled back into work because there are now people presenting eith melanomas that were missed because no one was going for their regular care early in the year. And now they’ve spread and now people are dying because of this; not to mention the backup.

There’s no silver lining here.