I'd be curious how many hospitals and associated beds etc ...are in LA County...
Miami -Dade county here has about 20 hospitals ...Goofle says 14 but the FL workbook shows 20 so Idk...
Population in Miami-Dade is probably close to 3 million....
LA county has a population of over 10 million....
Edit....
Found LA county hospitals....
Jeez.... 3 of our worst counties with covid, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami Dade have about 6million people ... There are a little over 18000 non icu beds and almost 1900 icu beds in those 3 counties....
LA County has 4 million
more people with fewer non icu beds and maybe 700 more icu beds....
MLK hospital has 20 icu beds and less than 100 other non icu beds so I'd be surprised if they were not slammed tbh....
There has been a general long term cost savings trend to reduce the length of inpatient hospital stays and this trend reduces the need for beds.
One source reports the number of hospital beds in 1994 was over 900k. By 2014 the bed count was down to 780k. A different source reports that today we have 930k staffed hospital beds, so roughly the same number as 30 years ago despite population increases.
I am not suggesting this is a bad thing as medical costs are far from under control, so the sharp pencil crowd has been hard at work.
I have long been critical of the medical community for not using expert computer systems to capitalize on the collective experience of all medical professionals. Of course this is easier said than done. Data collection is one major impediment. My last doctor visit involved a face to face (mask to mask) interview while she took notes on paper. My personal experience with the medical profession has been little changed over the decades. They have some better tools and improved medicines driven by private businesses, but still haven't figured out how to use the collective experience of the entire community effectively.
We have heard numerous anecdotes about possible mitigating treatments (for COVID) that have been resisted, sometimes based on who endorsed them (appearing to be political).
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but find it increasingly difficult to trust lots of expert opinions. I learned long ago that simple answers for complex problems can be too simple.
JR