The author of the article, “To Fight The Coronavirus, You Need An Army”  states that the largest problem in terms of caring for patients in Texas, is the shortage of staff. As directly quoted, “Our scarcest resource is human.” According to the author, individuals in Texas are faced with difficult decisions. The author mentions Greg Abbott, Texas’ governor, and how he was forced to roll back his reopening plan in July due to a surge in cases. More importantly however, the author mentions that, “…Abbott must find a way to pay for enough testing and contact tracing to bring the virus under control.” This is important due to the fact that Texas has no income tax and depends on consumption taxes for their revenue. The author states how the fight against the pandemic truly depends on the individual, and how they choose to take action against it. For example, I think that individuals in Texas did not handle it well in late April to early July. It seems like many adults did not take social distancing seriously especially during the July 4th holiday. As a result. there was a surge in cases due to the large groups that celebrated together with relaxed safety measures.

As for the medical community in Texas, the author mentions how in the beginning of Texas’ Covid case spikes, hospitals were so full of patients that they lined up hallways; some seeking treatment for Covid left. They describe that even though in the beginning there were hundreds and hundreds of cases at the hospital they worked at, if they hospital could not accept more patients, it was due to the fact that there weren’t enough nurses to care for them.

Similar to the state level, citizens play just as big a role as politicians and medical professionals. The ideals of, “freedom”, and, “independence”, clash together because of the way it can impact the way and rate Covid may spread. If an individual chooses not to wear a mask in public, or to not practice social distancing, it obviously does not help others for the greater good. And yet simultaneously, the individual has that liberty here in the U.S., to protect themselves and others, even though at a collective level many people are striving to social distance in order to prevent further spread of the virus.

The individuals and subgroups of a population slowly came together in the Hotel Corona as a result of tearing down divides in differing perspectives. At first, the different religions and subgroups of people isolated themselves from other groups. However, interactions with one another led to the groups beginning to come together. From this, we can learn and try to adapt these interactions within the Hotel Corona. I think that during the entirety of Covid, it is a deep reminder that everyone is only human and that we are all quite similar; certain things may differentiate us such as sex, skin color, religious beliefs, etc., however, at our core we are all human. I think if more people could learn to accept and more importantly, respect one another, it would make society less difficult.