The author of the New Yorker article, Ricardo Nuila, claims that the largest problem in terms of caring for covid-19 patients in Texas is not having enough I.C.U. nurses to care for them. At first, he was first worried about not having enough I.C.U. beds, ventilators, and negative pressure rooms. However, he noted later in the article that “Our scarcest resource is human.”

At the start of the pandemic in Texas, there were extra nurses that were able to accommodate patients. Hower, but as spikes increased, it became harder to account for them as more and more patients started coming in. Nurses without much experience, like Nuila, who have been working in certain units had to start working in I.C.U. units to help critical care doctors under supervision. In layman’s terms, they had to start amping up their games. All in all, nurses have been feeling a lot of pressure, but they have been adapting and making it work. The public, on the other hand, has had a more relaxed approach. Up until the Fourth of July, they have followed distancing and masking rules in Houston. However, on the holiday, they began to start ignoring the rules and covid-19 numbers started growing again.

The individual choices of citizens can greatly affect the rate in which covid-19 spreads as well as the lives of the people around them. The ideas of “freedom” and “independence” may cause one to think that it is their own personal choice whether or not they should wear a mask, without thinking about their impact on society. They’re only thinking about themselves when they feel as though they don’t have to wear a mask if they don’t want to and they’re free to do whatever they want.  

The differences in individuals often caused people in Hotel Corona to have confrontations. An example of this is when the receptionist at the hotel gave two people of the same religious and cultural background together in one room. It led to them fighting over the television and complaining that they cannot be in the same room together. Differences between subgroups within the hotel caused a divide. One of the women in Hotel Corona felt left out when she first joined because she was of a different background than those who were already in the hotel. This became very prominent when she was deciding where to sit in a lunchroom one day and noticed that everyone was sitting with their own religious/culture group. 

One thing that we can learn from those who stayed in Hotel Corona is to treat others as humans, no matter what differences there are among us. If it weren’t for the woman who felt left out to sit with the old Jewsih couple, other people in the Hotel probably would not have interacted with people from other groups. We need to stop treating others like they’re lesser than just because they come from a different background and treat them as humans just as the visitors of Hotel Corona did with each other.