In many of the United States, non-COVID patients are still being turned away to save room for a COVID surge that will never come.

A.J. Kay published an analysis that included some of the most egregious examples:

The Ban on Elective Procedures Is Killing More People Than COVID-19

As for the graphs, you and I agree on the way that line charts imply continuous data availability, but disagree on the use of column charts. The purpose of the line graph is to encourage interpolation between observations on a continuous scale.

Bar charts are for comparing data on a scale that is discontinuous.

In this case, the data is monthly (or weekly) and the units are time. The axis is continuous, and interpolation is a proper way to make inferences about what lies between the observations.