Deadly Threat or Big Lie?

Pf1zered! Part 4—How serious was the risk of overrunning hospitals during the Covid pandemic?

“Here’s the Biggest Thing to Worry About With Coronavirus. We don’t have enough ventilators and I.C.U. beds if there’s a significant surge of new cases. As with Italy, the health system could become overwhelmed.”

—The New York Times, March 12, 2020

“Of course, we now know that when they say the hospitals though are being overwhelmed, it's almost always a lie. With the exception of a few big city hospitals in the U.S., our hospital system was stretched for sure but it was never overwhelmed.”

—Laura Ingraham, Fox News, September 28, 2021

All through the pandemic, we were threatened that if we didn’t submit to draconian measures like lockdowns, quarantines, and vaccine mandates, the hospitals would be overrun. Not only would patients with severe cases of Covid go untreated, but there would be no space available if you were rushed to the E/R with some other life-threatening malady like a heart attack, a stroke, or a bullet wound. You would die forsaken on a gurney in a hospital corridor—if you got that far. You might very well draw your final breath in the parking lot, or in an ambulance that had been turned away.

Yet some people were skeptical.

This is Part 4 in my series Pfizered! In it, I discuss diet, the pandemic, how Covid vaccine side-effects took my life away, and how I got it back by defying the Medical-Governmental Complex (MGC). You can read it from the beginning starting here.

In this installment I’ll explore just how serious the risk was of hospitals being filled beyond capacity.

But first, my standing disclaimer: I’m not a physician. I’m not anything in the medical profession except a patient. I have no opinion whether what worked for me will work for anyone else, and nothing I say should be construed as advice. It’s just the story of what happened to me, and to the country; make of it what you will.

In my last installment I discussed how President Trump’s March 16, 2020 coronavirus guidelines paved the way for lockdowns in nearly every state. The hospitals-will-be-overwhelmed narrative was implicit in the title: 15 Days to Slow the Spread. It was an essential ingredient in the MGC’s argument.

This argument was kind of the raison d'être for the whole lockdown regime. It went like this: without “protective measures,” the number of Covid cases would grow so rapidly that hospitals would be unable to resist the onslaught. But if we we shut down schools, “non-essential” businesses, and public parks, we could “flatten the curve.” We’d still get Covid, but the cases would be spread out so as not to exceed the capacity of the healthcare system.

“Though old the thought and oft expressed, 'Tis his at last who says it best.”¹ The “flatten-the-curve” idea had been oft expressed since at least 2007. But it was said best by a viral graphic tweeted by Drew Harris of the Thomas Jefferson University College of Population Health. We’ve all seen it:²

The whole argument depended on the claim that there really was a significant risk of overwhelming the hospitals. The MGC and its toadies in the media proceeded to make that claim with a vengeance.

The New York Times piece quoted above was just one of many such articles that appeared—especially during the early days in the spring of 2020, and during the rise of the delta variant in the fall of 2021. If you go to Google News and search for articles since February 1, 2020 with the key words hospitals overwhelmed, you’ll get 65,000 results. The headlines were lurid and terrifying:

• “'It's a warzone': Shocking footage reveals coronavirus patients being treated in corridors at NYC hospital as doctors beg for ventilators and the death toll in the city surges past 1,000.” (The Daily Mail)³

• “A COVID Surge Is Overwhelming U.S. Hospitals, Raising Fears Of Rationed Care.” (NPR)⁴

• “No ICU beds? Expect double the number of Covid-19 deaths.” (Vox)⁵

• “Alabama man dies after being turned away from 43 hospitals amid COVID surge, family says.” (CBS News)⁶

• “These two families watched loved ones die of coronavirus in overwhelmed Utah hospitals.” (The Salt Lake City Tribune)⁷

• “‘Your child will wait for another child to die.’ Amid Covid-19 surge, Dallas County has no pediatric ICU beds left, county judge says.” (CNN)⁸

A few prominent people questioned the narrative. They were promptly insulted and dismissed as wackos. When Laura Ingraham said on Fox News that the narrative was “almost always a lie,”⁹ Mediaite called the claim “baffling,”¹⁰ and Crooks and Liars opined, “Apparently Fox News doesn't promote enough conspiracy theories so Ingraham threw out a new one.”¹¹ When Elon Musk went on a multi-tweet rant against the lockdowns, which included “FREE AMERICA NOW”¹² and “Hospitals in California have been half empty this whole time,”¹³ he was called “dangerously wrong”¹⁴ and “Just another used car salesman.”¹⁵

But maybe Ingraham and Musk were on to something.

The scare stories were overwhelmingly anecdotal. As you scroll through the pages and pages of Google results, you’ll be struck by how many of the articles were about individual cities and individual hospitals. Very few said much about the nation as a whole.

Anecdotal evidence is, of course, notoriously misleading. In some cases, the anecdotes didn’t stand up to scrutiny. For example, the story of the two families who lost loved ones in a Utah hospital is a tragedy and my heart goes out to them. But the only evidence presented in the article that overcapacity hospitals were genuinely a factor in the deaths was that the nurses had a heavy workload, and were therefore slow to answer the call button. Anyone who’s ever been in a hospital knows that’s just business as usual, pandemic or not. It’s a shame that as a society, we don’t do more to make working conditions easier for our compassionate, professional, and hardworking nurses. But as evidence that the hospitals were overrun, it doesn’t hold water.

When I looked beyond the anecdote, and dug up some statistics, I found that according to the Johns Hopkins Weekly Hospitalization Trends database, occupancy for staffed ICU beds in Utah was only 65% during the week in question.¹⁶ There were 199 ICU beds vacant in the state, out of a total of 565.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the early months of the pandemic, comprehensive statistics don’t seem to exist (if anyone know of such stats, please leave a comment pointing me in the right direction). All I found were small scale studies, like one that appeared in Critical Care Explorations. It found that between March and June 2020, 62% of the hospitals studied never exceeded their ICU bed capacity. Of the remaining 38%, which exceeded capacity for a day or more, all but one were only “slightly” above capacity. The exception, “a New York City site, where severe COVID-19 burden was highest, substantially exceeded capacity.” But the study only looked at thirteen hospitals nationwide. All in urban areas.¹⁷

In the absence of comprehensive data or large scale studies, anecdotes are pretty much all we have—and it’s a mixed bag.

The article mentioned above, “It’s a warzone,” published April 1, 2020, shows screen caps of patients on gurneys packed so tightly in corridors at Brookdale Hospital Center in New York City that there’s barely room for the gowned and mask staff to walk by.

There’s also video of fork trucks loading the dead onto a freezer truck outside because the morgue is full. People who work in other hospitals have confirmed to me that these horror stories about the early days were the truth.

And yet, there’s abundant evidence that they weren’t the whole truth.

For one thing, the increase in hospital admissions due to Covid was more than offset by a decrease due to other causes. In a New York Times opinion piece called, “Where Have All the Heart Attacks Gone?,” Yale University’s Dr. Harlan M. Krumholz wrote,

The hospitals are eerily quiet, except for Covid-19…Yale New Haven Hospital, where I work, has almost 300 people stricken with Covid-19, and the numbers keep rising — and yet we are not yet at capacity because of a marked decline in our usual types of patients. In more normal times, we never have so many empty beds.”¹⁸

The phenomenon went well beyond New Haven. A CDC report showed that nationwide, E/R visits declined 42% during April 2020, compared to the year earlier period.¹⁹ Even in “warzone” New York, E/R visits dropped by more than half.²⁰

The reason for this phenomenon is not well understood. Dr. Krumholz speculated it was due to telemedicine, pandemic changes in lifestyle, cancellation of elective procedures, and reluctance by the public to come into the emergency room because of the risk of contracting Covid there. Clearly the last reason was a double-edged sword. I’m sure that this reluctance delayed some patients from seeking lifesaving care until it was too late. But I’m equally sure that many unnecessary emergency room visits were avoided as well.

In preparation for the onslaught, overflow medical facilities were established. These facilities were used far below capacity. In the New York City area, the Army Corps of Engineers built four makeshift hospitals. Only one of them, the one in the Javitz Center, was actually used. It was envisioned to treat as many as 2,500 patients; it never treated more than 500 at a time, for a total of 1,094. Similarly, the Navy hospital ship Comfort, with 1,000 beds, docked at Pier 90. It treated a total of 182 patients. After a month, the Javitz Center facility was shut down and the Comfort sailed off to its next port of call.²¹

The story was the same in my own neck of the woods. Field hospitals in the Boston area were either used significantly below capacity, or never used at all:

At Boston Hope, the state’s largest field hospital erected inside the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, roughly 400 of 500 acute care beds sat empty during the pandemic’s peak in Massachusetts. The field hospital in Worcester's DCU Center had roughly half of its 206 beds filled during the peak. None of the 94 beds at the now-shuttered field hospital at Joint Base Cape Cod were ever used.²²

As for the notorious freezer trucks, the Brownstone Institute’s Jeff Tucker has argued that the reason they were needed was not because the number of corpses was so overwhelming, but because the lockdowns disrupted normal funeral home and cemetery operations.²³

Doctors and nurses had some learning to do during these first few months. It was a new virus, and they were still figuring things out. But they learned fast. A study by FAIR Health showed that average hospital stays for Covid dropped from 10.5 days in March of 2020 to 5.6 in September.²⁴

It’s difficult to compare the first months of the pandemic with the years that followed because of the dearth of statistics. But in all probability, the reduction in the length of hospital stays diminished the stress on facilities considerably, so that these early months were as bad as it got.

After that, statistics became more readily available, and we can leave the realm of anecdote. Data from Johns Hopkins database shows that from mid-2020, until collection ended in staffed ICU bed occupancy nationwide was more or less steady at around three-quarters of capacity. At no time did it exceed capacity.

Occupancy data is often criticized on the grounds that, even though the beds are available, there are still shortages of doctors and nurses. So I should point out that the Johns Hopkins data is staffed beds.

Which is not to say that there weren’t sporadic situations where the hospitals in particular areas were overwhelmed. In Alabama, for example, we see that it was touch and go in January, 2021. And in September, when the headline above about a man dying after being turned away by 43 hospitals was written, occupancy was actually 104% of capacity.

In our ever more polarized nation, it is natural to look at controversies as an either/or proposition. Either there was a real danger of overwhelming the hospitals, and anyone who disagreed was a bad person who wanted to kill grandma. Or it was all a Big Lie told by lying liars who lie.

Putting together the many pieces—the studies and statistics, the anecdotes and news stories—we find, to borrow a phrase from Bernard Lewis, that the truth is in its usual place.

During the early days of the pandemic, we have mainly anecdotal evidence to go on. But there’s no doubt that some hospitals, especially in urban areas, were stretched to the breaking point, even while others were “eerily quiet.”

But by the middle of 2020, doctors had learned a great deal about how to treat Covid, and the strain on the hospitals eased considerably. Although isolated spikes in staffed ICU bed occupancy did plague some areas, such as Alabama during the delta wave, the overall picture was one of more than adequate capacity for treating Covid patients.

I don’t think anyone could accuse me of being unfair if I were to to say that the threat of hospitals being overwhelmed, though real, was greatly exaggerated. The case for three years of lockdowns, quarantines, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, school closures, and other oppressive measures was built on sand.

Apologists for the MGC argue, “Well, yes, the situation in the hospitals wasn’t nearly as bad as we predicted. But that’s because the lockdowns worked!”

Just how well did lockdowns really work? That will be the subject of my next installment.

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Michael Isenberg eats meat, drinks bourbon, and writes historical novels set in the medieval Muslim world. Please check out his latest, The Thread of Reason, at http://amazon.com/dp/0985329750.

1. James Russell Lowell, For an Autograph, https://allpoetry.com/For-An-Autograph.

2. For the full story of how this graph evolved, see Wilson, Mark, “The story behind ‘flatten the curve,’ the defining chart of the coronavirus,” Fast Company, March 13, 2023, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.fastcompany.com/90476143/the-story-behind-flatten-the-curve-the-defining-chart-of-the-coronavirus.

3. Sharp, Rachel, “'It's a warzone': Shocking footage reveals coronavirus patients being treated in corridors at NYC hospital as doctors beg for ventilators and the death toll in the city surges past 1,000,” The Daily Mail, April 1, 2020, downloaded March 23, 2023, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8174689/Shocking-footage-reveals-chaos-inside-New-York-hospital-doctors-beg-ventilators.html.

4. Will Stone, “A COVID Surge Is Overwhelming U.S. Hospitals, Raising Fears Of Rationed Care,” NPR, September 5, 2021, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/09/05/1034210487/covid-surge-overwhelming-hospitals-raising-fears-rationed-care.

5. Belluz, Julia, “No ICU beds? Expect double the number of Covid-19 deaths,” Vox, January 13, 2021, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.vox.com/2021/1/13/22224445/covid-19-deaths-in-us-hospital-beds-icu.

6. Brito, Christopher, “Alabama man dies after being turned away from 43 hospitals amid COVID surge, family says,” CBS News,” September 13, 2021, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ray-demonia-alabama-death-cardiac-event-icu-full/.

7. Harking, Paighten, “These two families watched loved ones die of coronavirus in overwhelmed Utah hospitals,” The Salt Lake City Tribune, November 6, 2020, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/11/06/these-two-families/.

8. Hassan, Carma and Maxouris Christina, “‘Your child will wait for another child to die.’ Amid Covid-19 surge, Dallas County has no pediatric ICU beds left, county judge says,” CNN, August 13, 2021, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/13/us/dallas-county-no-pediatric-icu-beds-left/index.html.

9. Laura Ingraham, “It's almost always a lie” that hospitals “are being overwhelmed,” Media Matters, September 28, 2021, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/laura-ingraham-its-almost-always-lie-hospitals-are-being-overwhelmed.}

10. Josh Feldman, “Laura Ingraham Makes Baffling Claim: ‘It’s Almost Always A Lie’ When ‘They Say The Hospitals Are Being Overwhelmed,’” Mediaite, September 29, 2021, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.mediaite.com/tv/laura-ingraham-makes-baffling-claim-its-almost-always-a-lie-when-they-say-the-hospitals-are-being-overwhelmed/.

11. Amato, John, “Laura Ingraham's Crazy New Claim: Overwhelmed Hospitals Are 'A Lie,'" Crooks and Liars, September 29, 2021, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://crooksandliars.com/2021/09/laura-ingraham-claims-any-hospitals-are.

12. Elon Musk, Twitter, April 29, 2020, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1255380013488189440.

13. Elon Musk, Twitter, April 29, 2020, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1255678979043778560.}

14. Brandom, Russel, “Elon Musk is dangerously wrong about the novel coronavirus,” The Verge, April 29, 2020, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/29/21241180/elon-musk-coronavirus-conspiracy-misinformation-tesla.

15. Julia Carrie Wong, “Coronavirus has Elon Musk acting like just another used car salesman,” The Guardian, May 1, 2020, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/01/coronavirus-has-elon-musk-acting-like-just-another-used-car-salesman.

16. “Weekly Hospitalization Trends,” Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center, downloaded May 22, 2023, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/hospitalization-7-day-trend.

17. Douin, David J. et al., “ICU Bed Utilization During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic in a Multistate Analysis—March to June 2020,” Crit Care Explor, 2021 Mar; 3(3): e0361, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7994039/.

18. Krumholz, Harlan M., “Where Have All the Heart Attacks Gone?,” The New York Times, April 6, 2020, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doctors-hospitals-emergency-care-heart-attack-stroke.html.

19. Hartnett, Kathleen P. et al., “Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Emergency Department Visits — United States, January 1, 2019–May 30, 2020,” Centers for Disease Control, June 12, 2020, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6923e1.htm.

20. Hockett, Jessica, “New York City’s Hospitals Were Not Overwhelmed in Spring 2020,” The Brownstone Institute, October 13, 2022, https://brownstone.org/articles/new-york-citys-hospitals-were-not-overwhelmed-in-spring-2020/.

21. Miller, Joshua Rhett, “Javits Center hospital to close after treating nearly 1,100 patients during coronavirus,” The New York Post, May 1, 2020, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://nypost.com/2020/05/01/javits-center-hospital-to-close-after-treating-1000-patients/; Schwirtz, Michael, “The 1,000-Bed Comfort Was Supposed to Aid New York. It Has 20 Patients,” The New York Times, updated September 6, 2021, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/nyregion/ny-coronavirus-usns-comfort.html'; Simkins, Jon, “Hospital ship Comfort departs NYC, having treated fewer than 200 patients,” The Navy Times, April 30, 2020, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2020/04/30/hospital-ship-comfort-departs-nyc-having-treated-fewer-than-200-patients/.

22. Chen, Angus, “Most Of The Space In Massachusetts Field Hospitals Went Unused. Now, Some Are Looking To Shut Down,” WBUR, May 18, 2020, downloaded May 23, 2023, https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/05/18/massachusetts-field-hospitals-coronavirus-closing.

23. Jeffrey A. Tucker, “The Freezer-Truck Canard,” Brownstone Institute, May 1, 2023, downloaded May 24, 2023, https://brownstone.org/articles/the-freezer-truck-canard/.

24. Joseph, Andrew, “Data show hospitalized Covid-19 patients are surviving at higher rates, but surge in cases could roll back gains,” Stat, November 23, 2020, downloaded May 24, 2023, https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/23/hospitalized-covid-19-patients-surviving-at-higher-rates-but-surge-could-roll-back-gains/.