Hospitals are businesses. Like most businesses they budget based on razor thin margins and don't plan for backlogs. That means that if hospitals aren't near capacity, they can't stay open, just like restaurants. Does anyone not in the medical profession even have any idea that hospitals have to be at close to capacity all the time to stay open? The overhead expenses in hospital management are giant: salaries, maintenance of expensive equipment, replacing expensive equipment, staying up to date with state of the art equipment. It's not like hospitals sit around with 60% capacity year round just waiting for pandemics to fill them up. They work at close to capacity or over capacity all the time or they go bankrupt. Hospital practices say that if you're not 100% booked up every day, you aren't going to turn a profit or even stay open.