Citizens’ individual choices can have various effects on society in the time of a pandemic. A citizen’s decision to practice safe precautions could have a potentially dangerous effect if they decide to handle the situation carelessly. The author of the New Yorker article describes the problem with caring for COVID-19 patients as one primarily human. The problem is that there simply is not enough nurses to care for the amount of patients. When Texas reopened, many individuals chose to act carelessly and make plans as they pleased, which resulted in an upsurge in COVID-19 cases. The medical community in Texas as a whole has been struggling to maintain balance between the numbers of patients and staff to care for them.

Any time people are told that they cannot do something, their immediate instinct is to reject what it is. Telling people to wear a mask for the greater good of society, a task albeit tedious but not daunting, somehow makes a select few feel as if they are being oppressed. Some people simply do not take well to being told what to do and will not abide by the rules put in place to voice their “freedom” and “independence” at the expense of their peers’ health and safety. This difference in ideology amongst Americans, specifically, has created a hostility that is currently dividing citizens, which makes the community created in the Hotel Corona all the more commendable.

America is a melting pot of different cultures, and being New York residents, we are blessed enough to be surrounded by innumerable ethnicities and their corresponding cultures, but a country like Israel is not as lucky. In Israel, Arabians and Jews do not typically mix; even if two Jews or two Arabians are of the same ethnicity but of differing regions or levels of religious devotion, they will still not associate with one another. And yet, in the Hotel Corona, the crowd is the most diverse Noam Shuster Eliassi, a Jewish comedian, has ever seen. At her comedy show that she holds in the lobby, she saw people old and young, Jewish and Arabian, religious and secular, etcetera, all sitting together and laughing at the same jokes. After her comedy shows, Aysha, an Arabian hijabi who was a resident of the hotel,  noticed that different groups of people began eating together at meal times. She exclaimed that people of different backgrounds were approaching her and engaging in mutual conversations of each other’s cultures without prejudice; she had never experienced something like this.

I think we, as a society, could learn a lot from the people staying at Hotel Corona. If people in a country so divided can come together and engage in real, understanding conversations with one another, why is it so difficult for us Americans to do the same? We are so privileged to be in a place so abundant with culture and excitement, so why is it that we do not ask each other questions or try to understand where our peers are coming from? We should be taking advantage of our differences to be able to enlighten ourselves and view life from others’ eyes, and I think that once people begin to open their hearts to people who are different than them, our society will reach new heights.