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Source on your 20% number? That sounds really, really high.

For every person in the hospital due to covid is another person not able to receive care.

Hospital beds aren't unlimited.

ICU beds full? Someone has a heart attack? Well, sucks to be them.

That's the part of covid everyone is ignoring: it creates an additional burden on the health care system, hospitals that normally are booked solid for surgeries can no longer handle those cases due to the emergency influx from a pandemic spreading like wildfire.

Hospitals hit capacity and run out of beds and ventilators. This is a hard threshold. Once you pass it, mortality goes through the roof.

My point is even if hospitals were closed completely, it still seems unlikely that 20% of people who catch COVID would die from it.

Running out of ventilators would have minimal impact on the mortality rate. Mechanical ventilation is currently only used as a last resort for <5% of hospitalized patients, and even with ventilators many of those patients don't survive.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/nhcs/intubation-ventilator-...

Beds can be added on a temporary basis. Availability of trained healthcare providers is the more relevant limit.

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