I’m a doctor working on the frontlines and our state has uncontrolled community spread and we’ve had 4-5 extra people going in per day to help with the covid surge. The numbers are exponentially rising still and our governor has said there will be no shutdown. I feel like it is unsustainable and we are running out of staff and it’s terrifying to go into my shifts not knowing how many patients I’ll need to see and feeling like it could get unsafe and there’s nothing I can do as patients crash all around me because I don’t have 10 arms. And even if they did a shutdown today it will only get worse in the next month; but they’ve said they won’t do a shutdown and will use the convention center for a field hospital. Its unclear to me who would staff the convention center given we don’t even have enough doctors to cover all our physical hospital beds. I guess I just need to accept the fact that it will be unsafe and I will be called too many patients to see, and there will be patients who die because I can’t get to them, and there is no backup I can call, and this is the situation of most every healthcare provider in the US right now. I just am having a hard time accepting that because I feel responsibility to see all the patients I am called and provide good quality care. And the reality is that I will probably be overwhelmed with too many patients in the near future, and there’s nothing I can do about it but do as much as I can and help whatever number I can. It’s just a situation that I find myself resisting and having a lot of anxiety about because I feel it should not be the way that it is. It is a humanitarian disaster taking place in a 1st world country that could have been controlled with government support and public health measures. It feels almost futile in a way, because we don’t have the support of the government and the population has forgotten, and with the exponential growth, there’s almost nothing that can be done short of a government intervention, and they’re not doing it. But when I think these thoughts, regardless of the fact that they are the reality of the situation, it makes me fearful and angry. So, I’m trying to just accept the reality of the situation and just go in and do as many shifts as I can to help my coworkers and as many patients as I can, but it is really difficult. I feel like I’m still angry and afraid of seeing the hospital turn into a war zone with patients crashing all around me. I want to reframe my thoughts to be excited and energized, so I’ve been thinking thoughts like “I can do it!”, “I always figure things out”, “I am a doctor saving lives on the frontlines of a pandemic”, and they worked originally, but now they are falling flat in the face of reality. It just all feels so futile and it seems the government doesn’t care and has chosen the economy over people’s lives. And in order to keep working, I know I need to make peace with it somehow and stop resisting accepting the situation, but I’m having trouble with that.