The excess deaths in the model are caused by a red line of critical care capacity, which the study assumes is fixed at 14 per 100,000 population in the US. If the curve of cases requiring critical care rises too high, 100% of cases above the red line will die even though 50% could have been saved.
But the coronavirus doesn’t need the entire package of critical care a hospital might provide, just a ventilator and a bed. So the US is aiming to simply build enough ventilators to hike the red line above the curve. (I would assume the UK is doing the same thing but I haven’t been following their response.)
The excess deaths in the model are caused by a red line of critical care capacity, which the study assumes is fixed at 14 per 100,000 population in the US. If the curve of cases requiring critical care rises too high, 100% of cases above the red line will die even though 50% could have been saved.
But the coronavirus doesn’t need the entire package of critical care a hospital might provide, just a ventilator and a bed. So the US is aiming to simply build enough ventilators to hike the red line above the curve. (I would assume the UK is doing the same thing but I haven’t been following their response.)