Bracing for The Surge

Where are you seeing that? It's saying 1,175 beds right now.
Also, how the F does Arkansas, pop 3mil, has more hospital/ICU beds (5005, 394) than Mass, pop 7mil (4848, 277)

And I think most of his comments are harmful to any reasonable dialog. However the questions he raises here are reasonable. Baker is as corrupt as they come. I dont know if Tea Party Polito is corrupt but this should be looked at.

because other people may see this.

Re-purposing dorms is not ideal, except possibly the ones that are CONNECTED to the hospitals/have medical supplies in them, like BU/Tufts/ UMass Medical. Of course, those dorms are mostly full, because they still have med students in them.
In fact, most schools still have students in their dorms. A lot fewer, but they aren't completely closed, because some students aren't able to go home.

But there are certainly some empty dorms in MA, so why don't we use them?

The obvious issue of course is that dorms don't have the medical supplies/surgery centers etc that you need in a hospital or clinic, but there are other things people don't consider:

1. Most dorms have only one freight elevator that can hold a hospital bed and all of the people needed to move a coding patient, while hospital/nursing homes all have the large freight style elevators.
3. Most dorm rooms don't have bathrooms attached, so patients would need to use a communal bathroom, most of which are not handicapped accessible. This would require a sick patient to shuffle down the hall, coughing, and/or have a person to go with them.

While some dorms have industrial kitchens for dining services, most do not, and the ones that do still have students in them. They also don't have a way to serve those meals, because the students go to them. There's no process for taking the food to the individual rooms.

A better option would be housing medical personnel in the dorms, but then you need to transport them across the city somehow. You can't just shuffle out of Warren Towers on Comm Ave and catch an Uber to MGH, there would need to be a shuttle of some sort. Not a terrible idea, and one I'm sure the Governor is thinking of, should he need it.

Their model estimates a range of 1900-2400 beds needed today, while the actual number from DPH as of 4pm is 453. That's a pretty dramatic difference in this context.

I'd need more time than I have to pick through their paper to understand why it could be so far off, and whether it means we're just a few days slow getting there, if their model is too aggressive, or if we've bent the curve that much.

Looking into the underlying methodology at the link and all its talk about excess demand and average occupancy, I think 277 is the average available ICU beds statewide, after subtracting out however many other ICU beds are usually occupied by heart attack, trauma, etc patients.

Assuming they are in working order (which was not the case in California) and nothing else goes pear shaped.

If you hover over the icon next to "Hospital resource use" it provides more information about the numbers.
"ICU beds available is the total number of ICU beds available for COVID patients minus the average historical ICU bed use."

Please note:
The numbers for All beds needed and All beds available include ICU beds.
All beds available is the total number of hospital beds available for COVID patients minus the average historical bed use.
ICU beds available is the total number of ICU beds available for COVID patients minus the average historical ICU bed use.

Wouldn't MA have quite a few to begin with? (At least, one would hope that it's the case, especially given all the specialized operations that Boston-area hospitals are globally known for.)

It's based off average hospital/ICU occupancy. Most hospitals keep their hospital and ICU beds relatively full during normal times. The hospitals that I'm personally aware of have basically emptied their inpatient units for this surge. However, even starting with a completely empty hospital there will always be beds required for non-covid patients. Even using up non-traditional ICU spaces (step down, PACU, OR, etc.) for non-covid patients we might run out of places to put patients.