I’ll not take a stance on the correct number of free ICU beds as I do not feel qualified to judge these numbers without more insight on the intricacies of what would qualify fully operational beds, but regarding the stalling case numbers I feel confident enough (after looking at some raw numbers from the municipalities themselves [1]) to dismiss the apparent trend as a statistic artifact.

PCR test units and hospital bureaucracy are past their limits - e.g. regions like Bonn, Essen or Recklinghausen reporting zero cases on multiple consecutive days (Nov 29, Nov 30), which is _very_ unlikely w.r.t. the case numbers of the surrounding regions and those very regions reporting more than one hundred cases today.

The published indicators do not count cases that are reported late [2], which leads to apparently stalling case numbers. Growths may not be exponential forever but given that roughly one quarter of the population is not vaccinated, I would not take bets that the virus runs out of hosts before the health care system collapses.

I agree to the sentiment made that the balance between economic efficiency and damaging austerity for profit margin gains in the German health care system (especially for worker’s loans) has been tipping way too far to the latter in the past decades.

[1] https://www.lzg.nrw.de/covid19/download/laborbest_faelle_sar... (updated each day at 0:00 CET)

[2] https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus...

edit: some formatting.