To me, beyond what it is capable of handling - means that the system gets damaged - not the people that it is treating. What you described is what I would call "beyond it's peaking capacity for treating patients". Not a general "beyond capacity to handle". Imagine driving a car. Not being able to fit all your friends in the car is different than the car frame being crushed because too many people climbed onto it. I'm saying that the former is what we have/will experience - not the latter.
This feels a bit tortured. COVID has, is, or is threatening to overload our healthcare system as evidenced by:
1) Severely reduced in-take of new patients of patients due to lack of beds available (and longer COVID recovery time)
2) Reduced ability to effectively care for other patients due to limited beds and transmissibility of the disease, and workforce reductions as healthcare workers get sick (this is not a hypothetical, this is happening in the hospital my wife and brother work at).
3) Forcing healthcare works to perform their jobs without subsequent PPE for their own protection, increasing their own health risks and creating serious issues for mental well-being when working in this environment day-in and day-out.
The healthcare system is designed to treat patients. Believing the system is not exceeding what it can handle because somehow "the system itself" is not damaged (which I'm not even sure what you mean by that) but dismissing patient care and outcomes is like evaluating a vehicle's crash rating, but not evaluating the damage to the vehicle occupants.
