Well, if the hospitals are overburdened with Covid-19, good luck if you get in a car accident.
You're exactly right. Part of the over-reaction is taking people who normally would have died out of nursing homes and into hospitals. I have been in healthcare 23 years - never before have people with influenza symptoms been removed from their skilled nursing facility and into hospital ICU's. This is another part that serves no real purpose, makes no logical sense, and is a change from established practice - and yes, if you get in a car wreck in a town that has an overloaded ICU, your healthcare may very likely be impacted. It seems the only reason for doing this is to "get COVID out of nursing homes" - the same nursing homes that lose people to Influenza and Pneumonia every year. People watch these case counters like it's some sort of lottery.
I haven't seen Lithy, StevenK, Karou or myself say this wasn't new, this wasn't serious. The conversation i'm seeing is there were probably less impactful and more thoughtful ways to slow the spread of the disease. Targeting the vulnerable with quarantine type measures. Emphasizing rapid testing and antibody testing instead of politicizing ventilators.
If you look at countries like Iceland and Norway - they've done almost nothing other than encourage social distancing and hand-washing, things they normally do pretty well already. Sweden is an example of a Western country that has done nothing other than PSA's about being careful around the elderly and sick. Their curve and numbers are on par (per capita) with countries that have taken drastic measures.
To recap: it's new, it's scary, it's dangerous, it's adding a large caseload on top of an EXISTING near capacity case-load, and flattening the curve MAKES SENSE. How that is done is where the debate is happening. That's the goal post. Try to keep it where it is.