diseases at the university of alabama birmingham. doctor, thanks for being with us this morning. can you explain, what is a negative 11 beds? does that mean they're converting other spaces into i.c.u. units? what is that? >> yeah, good morning, brianna. unfortunately it means several very bad things. so, first of all, it means that you have patients who qualify for entry or admission into the i.c.u., but simply can't be accommodated. so where do those patients go? unfortunately they stay in the emergency room. they may even stay on the regular floor where you're already stretched for capacity to take care of these people because so many of our staff are out with covid. and it's really just a domino effect that then clogs up our e.r.s, clogs up everything else. so you can imagine when you're trying to take care of i.c.u. level patients in an emergency department, how are you going to be able to accommodate people