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Increasing hospital capacities is almost pointless because new cases will be exponential. So doubling your ICU-capacities (which is extremely difficult to do, mainly because you don't have the staff) will buy you two-three weeks until the hospital is full again.

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It peaks though, and comes back down. Every. Single. Time. Regardless of interventions.

The real world can't sustain exponential growth for too long, other limiting factors come in to play.

It's enough for the peak to swamp the hospitals over capacity for a week or two and the result will be very deadly, even just for non covid related cases.

Why has this literally never happened anywhere?

You mean why nobody doubled hospital capacity? (Easier said than done, and doesn't buy you much at all?)

Or why exponential growth didn't happen? (It did?)

Or why hospitals were never at capacity? (Because measures were taken to prevent specifically that exact scenario?)

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