COVID redefined what "running out of hospital beds" in western Europe means. So you can go on looking for articles before 2020, if you ask any professional in a hard hit area if Covid is "the same thing" as a bad season of Influenza they will tell you no.
Here's an example: in 2019 Portugal had around 500 ICU beds in the public hospital network. In February 2021 there were 900 people in ICU in Portugal just for COVID.
The point is - were lockdowns actually useful, or was it all just theatre?
Given that Sweden and Ukraine have lower COVID deaths per capita than lockdown countries, it would suggest that lockdown worsened the situation:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...
Portugal pursued measures like limiting opening hours which seem to have no purpose apart from concentrating people into stores at the same time.
It's actually quite easy.
If you look at the outbreak in the UK that started in November, you can see cases and hospital admissions rising rapidly before lockdown is imposed. Then in February, you can see cases falling rapidly while lockdown is still imposed.
The cases and hospitalisations are related to Covid - they don't map well onto lockdown. In fact excess deaths became negative for a while a the end of the spike, with lockdown still in effect.
Sweden 1,399.65
Denmark 431.21
Finland 170.64
Norway 146.23
> Given that Sweden and Ukraine have lower COVID deaths per capita than lockdown countries
That's simply wrong, by your own data.
We don't build hospitals to have excess capacity sitting around unused.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-42572116
"Hospital bosses said they had run out of beds as they battle with "very high" rates of flu."
Article from 2018. You can find the same articles from cities all around the world during regular yearly flu seasons.