Welcome to the Crown Cafe, our virtual gathering place for this course where we will be discussing issues arising from the Covid-19 pandemic as they relate to Operations Management. We're calling it the Crown Cafe because of the external crownlike appearance assumed by the "spike proteins" of the Coronavirus. "Corona" comes from an old Greek word denoting a wreath worn as a crown.) It is this "spike protein" that binds with the ACE2 protein on the surface of human cells, thereby initiating the process that results in the virus being internalized into a cell. The virus then uses our genetic machinery to reproduce itself, releasing more and more virus into our bodies. There is an entire field of study called Disaster Management that has been around for years, and epidemiologists had been warning us for decades that a pandemic was imminent. And yet, even as late as December-end 2020 , nurses and other health care professionals in many hospitals did not even have the basic equipment needed to perform their functions. Read the following article from ProPublica (dated December 30, 2020) and identify the operations failures and their causes at this particular VA hospital: propublica.org/article/those-of-us-who-dont-die-are-going-to-quit-a-crush-of-patients-dwindling-supplies-and-the-nurse-wholost-hope