Hospitals in the country aren't overwhelmed. The majority of them are seeing lower than normal patient counts as they've canceled elective procedures and people are avoiding the hospital because of Covid. Only a handful of hotspots like NYC, NO, and Seattle are being significantly impacted.
>He's proposing one serious shutdown to calm things down before we gradually go back to normal life.
The point is we can't go back to "normal life". Going back to normal life gets us back to where we are now 2-3 months after the lock down ends. We have to get to a new normal that will stop the spread.
That's what I meant about gradually moving to normal life. As for hospitals, many are not overwhelmed yet! Based on projections we're not yet at peak hospital resource use at any state. I live in MA where hospitals are still OK. But projections say we will be at peak in 2 weeks and unless the state does something about it (which they do) we will have a serious shortage of beds and equipment. So a serious shutdown for let's say another ~3 weeks should help us passing the peak without major problems.
>He's proposing one serious shutdown to calm things down before we gradually go back to normal life.
The point is we can't go back to "normal life". Going back to normal life gets us back to where we are now 2-3 months after the lock down ends. We have to get to a new normal that will stop the spread.