A woman in Gloucestershire was arrested in her home after she posted a video of herself wandering around an apparently empty hospital (Gloucestershire Royal Hospital):
https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/woman-arrested-connection-video-filmed-4841311
The video appears to conflict with the impression left on the mainstream media: that hospitals are full with coronavirus patients and can't cope.
However, it also appears to conflict with the reports of doctors and nurses who are insisting that they are indeed busy and are working overwhelmingly long shifts to keep up with the added stress caused by coronavirus. So what's going on?
The answer appears to be complicated: Hospitals are busy but not due to an influx of patients.
The NHS publishes data as to the occupancy rate of beds:
https://data.england.nhs.uk/dataset/bed-availability-and-occupancy-data-day-only-timeseries
According to the above link, the number of beds open are lower than usual but only slightly. The period 2020/21 Q1 had about 10,000 daytime beds available and the latest period 2020/21 Q2 has about 11,000 daytime beds available. The usual number of daytime beds available is about 12,000.
Confusingly, however, the number of occupied daytime beds is actually about half the number that it usually is (about 10,000) for the 2020/21 Q1 period (about 5,000) and well under the number that it usually is for the 2020/21 Q2 period (about 8,000).
Even more confusingly, the percentage of beds occupied in the 2020/21 Q1 period is 50%, while it is normally about 85%. So what's going on? Why is the government and media justifying the lockdown on the basis that the NHS will be overwhelmed if we have half the number of people in hospital?
The answer is more or less explained in this article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/55536762
The reason why staff are so busy, despite there being fewer patients in hospital than normal is because of the measures being taken to prevent infection spreading. This involves sending doctors and nurses home when they test positive for coronavirus and reducing the total number of available beds so that they can be spaced out.
However, it doesn't stop there. Going by this NHS data:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/
The number of people admitted to hospital in England with covid has been stable at around 300 people a day since the beginning of November. In contrast, the number of people in England in hospital with covid has remained at about 13,000 people a day also since the beginning of November.
It would be best for anyone to look at the data themselves and draw their own conclusions. However, it appears that the number of people being admitted daily to hospital with covid small (about 300 a day) compared to the number of people with covid in hospital (about 13,000 a day). We also know that the reason that hospitals are so stressed is because of the reduced number of beds and because of the anti-infection measures being put in placed that slows doctors and nurses down. So we can conclude that the government's claims that covid is a highly infectious disease that is at risk of overwhelming the NHS is false. The reason the NHS is overwhelmed is not that too many people are being admitted to hospital with covid - they aren't - it's because hospitals are being forced to operate at a reduced capacity than normal both in terms of staff and beds.
EDIT: It occurred to me that 300 people admitted to hospital for covid per day might actually be a large number, as I dont work in health care and I'm not familiar with the hospitalisation rates in England. This 2018 bbc article claims that flu admissions in the first week of January that year was about 5,000. So 300x7 = 2,100 people a week. Significant perhaps but no where near significant enough to be abnormal, alarming or worth shutting down society for and removing civil liberties.
EDIT2 (18/01/2021): The data has since been updated (grab the spread sheet Covid-Publication-14-01-2021 on this page and the number of people admitted to hospital with covid was about 1,000 people a day... so a strong increase no doubt but still about the same number as are admitted with flu in a bad flu year.
there doesn't seem to be anything here