Originally Posted by Anson Harris

Nah, I don't think so. Even in NYC, they didn't use the temporary hospitals or Navy ships. It's not necessarily about hospital capacity, although that theoretically could be an issue (although I'd argue it hasn't actually been yet).

We first need to know how to treat the disease, which we didn't initially and seem to be very slow to understand even now. Meaningfully effective treatments for covid are relatively simple (compared to invastive ventilators), but still require basic hospital capacity and timely treatment. Hospital capacity (including emergency capacity) has not been in serious question in the US yet, but effective treatment and protection of vulnerable populations certainly has.