Yesterday, I received a text from a colleague whose sister is in charge of nursing at one of my city’s major hospitals. Two of her nurses had just quit, in tears. “They were fed up,” she said. “They couldn’t take it any longer.”

As anyone, like me, who has worked in a hospital, clinic or emergency room knows, this was very bad news. Because all of us who care for patients are intimately familiar with this calculus: As the ratio of patients to doctors and nurses increases, the quality of care diminishes. Waiting rooms fill up, providers scramble and patients get an increasingly abridged version of care, if they are seen at all.

Over the last few weeks, as coronavirus has spread across the country, many have been sounding the alarm about our country’s lack of critical resources like ventilators and hospital beds. But the worst shortage we face is that of doctors and nurses — the health care professionals who can staff those beds, administer the life-supporting intravenous medications and run the ventilator machines.

Even in the best case situation, with a shortage of skilled doctors and nurses, caring for Covid-19 patients with life-threatening respiratory distress will be like using a Band-Aid to stop a carotid artery bleed.