With the case count climbing again in Texas, Dr. Garner has recurring nightmares that one of his children has died from Covid. He’s returned to 80-hour weeks in the intensive care unit, donning layers of pandemic garb including goggles, an N95 respirator, a protective body suit and a helmet-like face shield that forces him to yell to be heard…

In interviews, more than two dozen frontline medical workers described the unrelenting stress that has become an endemic part of the health care crisis nationwide. Many related spikes in anxiety and depressive thoughts, as well as a chronic sense of hopelessness and deepening fatigue, spurred in part by the cavalier attitudes of many Americans who seem to have lost patience with the pandemic…

Many have reached the bottom of their reservoir, with little left to give, especially without sufficient tools to defend themselves against a disease that has killed more than 1,000 of them.

“I haven’t even thought about how I am today,” said Dr. Susannah Hills, a pediatric head and neck surgeon at Columbia University. “I can’t think of the last time somebody asked me that question.”