Thanks to the standards of living in the West, we have a sizeable population of seniors and people who live with chronic illness. Enough to collapse our healthcare systems. Look at what happened to Italy. If healthcare collapses, people start dying from curable diseases.
UK is over 1k today - to give you an idea. currently spain is doubling every 3 days and so is the UK
Let me show you some WHO data:
BOTH the UK and USA have LESS beds per 1000 than Spain, And all three have less beds per 100 than Italy (by a margin of almost 10%).
Italy and Spain have close to 50% more physicias per 100 than both the UK and USA.
When it comes to nurses, however, both the UK and USA have considerably more nurses per 1000 than Italy and Spain (US about double, UK 50% more).
If Italy's health system got overrun, it means that when it hits big in the UK and USA you'll run out of beds 10% faster. It also means you'll run out of doctors 50% faster. But not everything is lost: your COVID patients will be pampered thanks to the army of nurses you're running over there.
Hey, by the way, remember China needing to build hospitals in a rush to host the COVID patients? Before COVID hit China had 50% more hospital beds than the UK or the US.
I don't know man, lockdown seems reasonable when you see the numbers.