As Covid-19 ravaged through the United States, we, as citizens, did a horrible job of understanding its severity and spreadability. In Ricardo Nuila’s “To Fight the Coronavirus, You Need an Army,” he highlights the largest problem in taking care of Covid-19 patients: the lack of health professionals, specifically nurses. Contrary to popular belief, nurses aren’t “interchangeable,” as stated by Nuila. Instead, they are nurses that come from all different professional backgrounds and unite forces so that they could combat the influx of patients coming in. Hospitals rely on the adeptness of their nurses to essentially switch specialties and adapt to the needs of Covid-19 patients. Hospitals don’t turn away patients because of their lack of medical instruments, such as ventilators or I.C.U. beds. Instead, they turn patients away for their lack of nurses. So far, the tardiness of Governor Abbott’s mask requirement placed a heavy burden on the medical community with new Texas cases climbing as high as 10,000 people per day. Despite more nurses joining the forces and being trained for Covid-19 care, Nuila puts the utmost importance on citizens socially distancing themselves while wearing masks. 

The issue with government-mandated procedures is that it quickly turns political for a lot of people. Rather than realizing the benefits of wearing a mask—for both their own self and others—people would rather believe that it is an infringement of their freedom as an American citizen. The refusal to follow any government precautions becomes a threat to virtually everyone in society during this pandemic. As mentioned by Nuila in his article, the best way to decrease the number of infections is through an individual’s will to both social distance and wear a mask. However, when some American people feel like they are being forced to do something, for some reason, they go completely against it simply because they have the right to do so. This alone is the force that drives a division between communities and ultimately nullifies the sense of togetherness that we need to power through this national crisis. Instead of coming together and deciding that the best solution to this pandemic is by wearing masks, we further deepen the divisions already present in our society by creating two new parties: the mask-wearers and the anti-maskers. 

When taking this knowledge of how subdivided Americans are, listening to the Hotel Corona podcast puts these divisions into a global lens. The tensions between the several religious groups like the Israelis and Palestinians that were housed in Hotel Corona were prevalent in the beginning. By the end of their quarantines, however, these groups mingled and eventually looked past their differences as separate groups. Despite differences in beliefs, whether it be religious or political, we should all remember that at our cores, we are all human. When times call for communities to unite and prevent the spread of a virus, we should realize that Covid-19 does not discriminate like how we might. Thus, we should make more of an effort to put aside our differences and work together to achieve the common goal of eradicating Covid-19.