
As more of them die, grocery workers increasingly fear showing up at work - turtlegrids
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/12/grocery-worker-fear-death-coronavirus/
======
strict9
This is going to get worse, and for other professions not generally getting
news coverage.

A close relative of mine for the USPS. Mail volume has dropped dramatically,
yet they are desperate for employees to work overtime.

It's because so many are using their vacation/sick time or otherwise not
coming in, and I don't blame them. Some are going through cancer treatment,
have diabetes, or other complications which put them at risk.

Some in the distribution center have contracted COVID-19, and at least one
(but maybe more) has already died.

There are a lot of people endangering their life coming in to work, and not
just grocery stores and hospitals.

~~~
chrisseaton
> Mail volume has dropped dramatically, yet they are desperate for employees
> to work overtime.

I thought mail volume was dramatically _up_ because everyone’s ordering
online?

~~~
ilamont
I talked to the franchise owner of a UPS store outside of Boston, and he
reported a 50% dropoff in business, as well as a shift in the types of orders
for people working from home as well as people shipping things like toilet
paper.

The big issue for the post office is the amount commercial mail has fallen off
a cliff and will likely continue to drop. Anecdotally, we have seen very
little junk mail in the past month other than grocery fliers. I predict serial
publications like regional magazines will fail, too -- running a magazine was
already tough, but now it's even worse now that many advertisers have gone out
of business or are cutting back on marketing costs. If they don't have enough
subscribers to keep the presses running, it's game over.

~~~
Nasrudith
Interesting yet in retrospect not too surprising given that even Amazon is
bottlenecking - even with increased demand in general that they could have
issues keeping demand up.

------
PaulDavisThe1st
Then again, here's Kevin Drum @ Mother Jones asking what he got wrong here:

[https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/04/working-
in-a-...](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/04/working-in-a-grocery-
store-is-a-pretty-safe-job/)

RTLD: 41 cited deaths among 3M grocery workers is a lower death rate than the
population as a whole ?

~~~
gruez
>RTLD: 41 cited deaths among 3M grocery workers is a lower death rate than the
population as a whole ?

If you're comparing grocers death rate against the population as a whole,
that's not a good comparison as it doesn't control for grocer's demographics.
I think that grocers would be younger (on average) than the the general
population, and therefore should have lower death rates.

~~~
meowface
What is the term for this sort of statistical error? I see it very often in
online discussions.

I think it's related to Simpson's paradox [0] or general issues with
interpreting conditional probabilities, but I'm not sure what the best
overarching term is for this sort of fallacy.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox)

~~~
syrrim
Failure to control for confounders.

------
gwittel
In the SF south bay area stores have been very uneven across the board with
respect to sanitizing and rate limiting customers. Some seem to be faster and
started early (e.g. Trader Joe's) while others are doing little.

A few days ago was the first time I saw that most (not all) Whole Foods
workers had PPE (mask, gloves). I'm hoping its a supply issue, but wouldn't be
surprised if it was a corporate "don't scare people" issue.

While I strongly prefer to select my food for quality, I'd be happy for
workers' sake if stores were pure pickup only (basically a local warehouse)
with enough slots for everyone to get what they need; leaving delivery for
those who really need it. But stores are just not equipped to handle that sort
of operation.

~~~
triceratops
I'm curious, how do gloves help protect you from Covid? It's not transmitted
through the skin, and you will get just as sick if you touch your face with
bare hands as with gloved hands.

~~~
WillPostForFood
The value of gloves is they help keep your hands clean. If you don't wear
gloves, you are reliant on a good hand wash to get the virus off. You can miss
spots, it can get under your nails. Gloves aren't going to help if you are
touching your face with them, but they allow for a better decontamination
process.

------
tyingq
I noticed they aren't very consistent. Some stores already put up plexiglass
barriers in front of the cashiers, appear to be enforcing distance, etc.
Others aren't.

------
mikekhusid
Grocery worker COVID deaths: 41/900000 = 0.00004555555 (this number is from
article and only for union members).

Total US COVID deaths: 28000/328000000 = 0.00008536585. So seemingly there's
nothing particularly risky about being a grocery store worker. In fact, you're
about half as likely to die!

Keep in mind the 328mm number includes children, non-working adults, etc and
of course total deaths are skewed towards older non-working adults. Still it's
extremely frustrating, but not surprising, that the media refuses to do any
sort of cursory analysis like this.

~~~
pixl97
It's probably not about death, it's probably about the no insurance and risk
of bankruptcy by hospitalization they fear.

~~~
thatcat
Does workman's comp cover on job exposure?

------
saalweachter
We've basically split our population into two groups, a large group that is
(hopefully) staying put and not interacting with the world as much as
possible, and a small group that is still going about business as usual,
because we need them to. The smaller group is hopefully doing everything they
can reduce their risks, but small risks repeated frequently become likely
odds.

As a civilization, this still buys us a lot (in the US, it's the difference
between 30 million and 230 million people catching the disease and some
percent of them dying), but even if you assume all 3 million grocery store
employees are in the low-risk 20-29 demographic, we're still expecting ~1200
of them to die from COVID-19, given our current understanding of the disease.

That alone would make working in a grocery store roughly as dangerous as being
a coal miner in the present day US, or roughly 4 times more dangerous than
being a police officer; it gets worse if you assume many employees are not in
the lowest risk category.

~~~
marcosdumay
We will all get the disease, we won't delay it enough to get a vaccine. Those
people will just get it earlier.

What we are fighting for is to not let everybody get it at the same time.
Because when that happens, not only this disease kills a whole lot more, but
other diseases and accidents and whatever start killing many times more too.

------
tpmx
The rational thing would be to pay grocery workers in risk groups (underlying
diseases, age) to stay at home.

(And recruit healthy young people to temporarily replace them.)

~~~
gruez
>(And recruit healthy young people to temporarily replace them.)

better yet, people who recovered from covid-19.

~~~
robotron
That's not a guarantee of anything. Reinfection or relapsing happens and is
not explained yet.

------
alexandercrohde
Well, these store have to stay open, no matter what. So I guess there's
nothing to be done, other than have low-risk populations ready to fill these
roles.

Seems a little bit scare-mongery to me.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _there 's nothing to be done, other than have low-risk populations ready to
> fill these roles._

Or increase wages. Quantity demanded of labor is greater than supply. It's
relatively-unskilled work, so drawing new entrants to the labor pool isn't
prohibitive. But it isn't happening at prevailing wages.

That wage increase, in turn, might merit price increases for customers. If
politicians find that untenable, they may spread the cost to taxpayers instead
through public programs.

If you're involved at any of these levels, reading the writing on the wall
would be useful.

~~~
Der_Einzige
Why would a corporation do that? These jobs are "essential" and are also
_extremely easy to replace_. That's why we don't see wages going up and likely
will see the opposite in the coming few months.

Supply is FAR larger than demand right now. Have you seen the unemployment
rate right now?

------
danzig13
There definitely should be a rule limiting the number of people allowed in
stores.

I've quit going to our before pandemic store. It is impossible to social
distance.

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/rVsdx](https://archive.md/rVsdx)

------
DoreenMichele
We need cultural changes.

More self checkout.

More automatic sliding doors.

Better designed public bathrooms similar to Walmart bathrooms: No door at all;
choice between paper towels and hot air hand dryer; touchless faucets and
automatic flush toilets.

Hand sanitizer at every cash register.

Better training for cashiers. Cashiers who do things like lick their fingers
to open bags have long been the bane of my existence because I have a
compromised immune system.

What we are doing now is not the way it has to be. PPE is not the optimal
solution.

I think we have our priorities backwards. We emphasize the hell out of hand
washing. It's number one on the list of "five things" the WHO is encouraging
people to do to stop the spread.

Number three is "Stop touching your face." That should be the top priority.
It's prevention.

Emphasizing hand washing as more important than "stop touching your face" is
implicitly telling people "It's okay to expose yourself. Just use soap
afterwards and everything will be okay."

No, it won't. You need to stop touching your face. You need to stop licking
your fingers to separate grocery bags.

On top of that, you should also wash hands frequently. But washing hands
frequently isn't enough in the current culture where people are oblivious
about the things they touch.

When I ask cashiers "Please don't do that" or "Please use hand sanitizer now
that you have licked your fingers" they sometimes tell me they didn't do what
I just watched them do seconds ago. They do it so habitually, they aren't even
consciously aware of it anymore.

In some cases, they get belligerent with me. How dare I ask them to practice
germ control! How rude!

Yes, this was mostly before the pandemic. I've been trying to protect myself
from infection for a lot of years. It's largely irrelevant to my point.

My son told me he saw two people hugging in the parking lot of the grocery
store and one of them confusedly asked "Aren't we supposed to not hug?" and
the other, an older person, dismissed that with "We aren't supposed to hug
strangers!"

Even with their lives on the line, people are failing to get the memo that you
can't run around touching everyone and everything. This needs to somehow stop
and I'm appalled that the WHO is part of the problem here in that they are
emphasizing hand washing as the top priority rather than emphasizing "Keep
your hands clean to begin with by not touching every damn thing, especially
not your face."

And I don't know if the WHO is that stupid and honest to god doesn't realize
that not touching stuff is the more important thing or if they have studies
and yadda and they believe that it is a lost cause to tell people "No, really,
_stop touching stuff!!!_ " and hand washing will get more compliance, so they
emphasize that.

But they have their priorities backwards. We can get this under control, but
we have to practice germ control and the messaging we are getting is
insufficient.

~~~
prmph
Actually, the number one thing would be to use a mask whenever you are out. I
suspect breathing in aerosolised virus particles is the main mode of infection
now. Second would be not touching your face. Washing hands, as important as it
is, comes third.

I laugh inwardly whenever I see stores requiring the use of hand sanitizer at
their entrances; they should be handing out masks if they are serious. Of
course that's much more expensive than doling out sanitizer.

I expected governments to organize mass production and distribution of re-
usable face masks for their populations, but so far I see nothing of the sort.
If we are going to be able to resume a somewhat normal life going forward, use
of mask has to become the norm rather than the exception.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I used to use a lot of medical equipment that had to be sterilized daily in
boiling water. One day, we accidentally boiled all the water out and we had to
replace the bulb syringe and find some new way to sterilize on a budget when
buying a new pot to replace the ruined was temporarily beyond our means.

So we bought distilled water and that was not only dramatically more effective
than boiling, it stopped putting steam into the air in our apartment and that
brought down the levels of ambient mold spores and noticeably improved air
quality.

I've had similar experiences with, for example, ozone machines. And I
increasingly moved away from things like shiny tech and personal medical gear
because it gradually became clear that maintaining such things is problematic.

And I'm no doubt running a fever and wasting my time replying to you. But I
really think the emphasis on masks is misguided.

Don't touch your face and don't cough on people and don't blow your nose in
public. If you aren't coughing, sneezing, etc at people and you are giving
them a wide berth, you aren't likely to share your germs with them.

Anyway, I think I should probably step away from this discussion. It's
probably not productive.

You have a nice day.

------
voiper1
Paywalled. [https://outline.com/2SY4ks](https://outline.com/2SY4ks)

------
kbuchanan
I pay for the Post. Love their reporting. But man! I've never seen so much
fear mongering as they've peddled in the last month. News is a product—I get
that. But they're _straining_ to wring every last drop out of COVID.

~~~
clairity
every news outlet is doing that. every political leader (garcetti in LA
particularly) is doing that. it foments fear and hysteria. it's infuriating.

news sites post infection/death numbers for covid front and center,
conveniently ignoring the 98-99% of non-covid deaths that are just as tragic
and heartbreaking. they did that during 9/11 and for every mass shooting
since. it's sickening.

~~~
el_benhameen
Covid-19 is now the leading daily cause of death in the US. It's novel, people
care about it, and it's more immediately preventable through collective action
than other leading causes of death (2nd and 3rd are heart disease and cancer).
I don't see how media attention is unreasonable.

~~~
jshevek
Breaking the data into "current daily" is the most extreme way of framing the
data, given that we are currently suffering a rush of deaths due to the
delayed effect of accelerated infection rates that occurred before the
shutdown. (Many of the individual infections occurred after, but the critical
mass of asymptomatic carriers occured before, in NY and other hotspots.)

------
lonelappde
41 dead out of 3 million.

Odds aren't so bad yet.

~~~
happytoexplain
A person's tolerance for odds of dying is understandably relative to context.
A grocery store worker would be rightfully unhappy about increased odds of
dying, even if their odds of dying remain very low absolutely speaking.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
I feel like knowledgeable people have always encouraged the general public to
understand statistics and realize that, as dangerous as some things might
seem, the risk from them is very low, i.e. “Don’t be afraid to do common
activity X, because many more people perish in a year from heavy things
falling on them at home, or in car crashes” etc. But now with the virus that
calm and sober thinking is all going out the window and some are suggesting
that it is fine for the public to fret and panic.

------
cultus
Listening to capitalists, one would think that wages would just increase and
safety would increase to equilibrate the labor supply. It's interesting that
doesn't happen, but instead these major retail companies are taking out huge
ad buys to performatively praise their workers in front of third parties.

~~~
mnm1
Of course. That's corporate America strategy #1. Never fix anything, never
concede to anyone, never admit wrong, and if all else fails distract with a PR
campaign or by donating a tiny amount of money. As if the damage a company
like Amazon (just as an example) could ever be mitigated by donations from
Bezos. It's a clever trick. Starbucks buying coffee from war torn areas? No
problem. Donate some money to charity and pretend the company isn't a piece of
shit exploiting the world. Workers dying at supermarkets? No problem. Put up
bullshit ads and other PR materials to pretend you care. Companies don't have
feelings of course, but it'll gain the goodwill of Americans too stupid to
realize they are being swindled.

