They run the canal at maximum capacity indefinitely. Due to the lack of downtime, any delays are in effect the same thing as a cancel from the perspective of the canal owners.

According to reports, the backlog of traffic should be cleared in about 10 days. They must have some spare capacity available in order to do that.

Maybe backlog will be cleared as result of some ships taking route around Africa?

The canal was blocked for only 6 days. Then 10 days to clear would suggest the opposite, that there is not spare capacity. All shippers have to eat a permanent delay that will never be caught backup, everyone is 10 days behind forever.

And re-routes around Africa don't count as spare capacity for the canal itself.

Of course there may be some *literal* spare capacity, that could be realized by violating processes. But the canal is in fact run at maximum capacity according to the maximum that official process allows.

But building everything to have a higher capacity also wastes a lot of resources! It is a balancing game.

What is so critical about the Suez Canal. If it were down for a month/year. what do you think the impacts would be? Would most ship traffic simply go around Africa?

Accepting that globalization wasn't such a big thing then, the closure between 1967 and 1975 would be a good source of objective 'what actually happened' data.

We'd have to build a lot more ships and containers and burn a lot more fuel. Consumer prices would be higher, and some products wouldn't be on shelves

Low utilization can be even more costly.

Like having nurses and doctors idling around, just in case a pandemic appears out of nowhere?