Inside the emergency department at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan, staff members were struggling to care for patients who are showing up much sicker than they’ve ever seen. Tiffani Dusang, the emergency room’s (ER) nursing director, practically vibrated with pent-up anxiety, looking at patients lying on a long line of stretchers pushed up against the beige walls of the hospital hallways. “It’s hard to watch,” she said. But there’s nothing that she could do. The ER’s 72 rooms are already filled. “I always feel very, very bad when I walk down the hallway and see that people are in pain or needing to sleep or needing quiet. But they have to be in the hallway with … 10 or 15 people walking by every minute,” Dusang said. The scene is a stark contrast to where this emergency department—and thousands of others—were at the start of the pandemic. Except for initial …