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As more of them die, grocery workers increasingly fear showing up at work
- lonelappde 7y ago41 dead out of 3 million. Odds aren't so bad yet.
- markbnj 7y agoDo you work at a grocery store or other retail establishment dealing with the public every day? I'm no statistician but I suspect your take on the odds is pretty meaningless. It's probably riskier to be bagging groceries in Jersey City, NJ than in some other places.
- alexandercrohde 7y agoWhat? So only people who bag groceries are allowed to double-check the math?
- untog 7y agoEDIT: I can't reply to the post below because HN has told me I'm posting too much (last post was 12 minutes ago?) so rather than leave the point up without the ability to defend it I'll just remove.
- alexandercrohde 7y agoHow is you calling that guys numerical point worthless any different than if you said "Those grocery store workers aren't professionals, they don't know the odds, their opinion is meaningless" ?
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- happytoexplain 7y agoA 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.
- makomk 7y agoA person's tolerance for dying mostly seems to be relative to how attention-grabbing the cause of death is and how much attention the press gives it. I do have to wonder if some of these groups of workers are actually any more at risk from this than they would be from the flu during a typical winter, given how heavily concentrated Covid-19 deaths are in the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions. These jobs are more exposed to the flu for exactly the same reasons as they are to Covid-19, but we don't keep a count of how many grocery workers die of ther flu each year, or how many nurses and other medical staff, because it's just the flu, and there certainly aren't headlines keeping us up to date on the tally.
- Mediterraneo10 7y agoI 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.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- draw_down 7y agoGuessing you sit at home for work. Such a brave comment
- rurp 7y agoHow many of those 3 million have gotten brutally ill and had to spend many days suffering at home or hooked up to a ventilator, wondering if they would survive the week? Probably a lot more than 41 people. How many more people are going to get very sick in the upcoming weeks and months? Probably a lot more. Dismissing the workers' concerns with misleading statistics like you have done here is irresponsible at best.
- zzzeek 7y agoemphasis on "at least", do you honestly think there is solid public data of the exact occupational breakdown of all 22K people who have died in the US so far?
- DanBC 7y agoWill the CDC will eventually have that data? They're using death certificates, and I think those should include occupation. (Although I don't know how this works in the US). https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm > Future updates to this release may include additional detail such as demographic characteristics, additional causes of death (e.g., acute respiratory distress syndrome or other comorbidities), or estimates based on models that account for reporting delays to generate more accurate predicted provisional counts. Guide to death certificates for covid-19: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/vsrg/vsrg03-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/vsrg/vsrg03-508.pdf
- MisterBastahrd 7y agoThe vast majority of those 3 million don't have health insurance and would be completely destroyed financially with a hospital stay.
- kyleee 7y agoUninsured folks treated for covid-19 will be covered according to one of the recent briefings. There is also an enrollment period triggered for those who lose their jobs
- MisterBastahrd 7y agoHaving watched people deal with government benefits at all levels, I am not surprised that they don't trust that they will be covered. Even still, since when is potentially dying of an illness an intelligent trade off for a minimum wage job?
- kyleee 7y agoAgree with your last bit, maybe better to go on unemployment depending on one's risk profile, health, and family status
- WillPostForFood 7y agoCitation? Every major grocery store chain I am aware provides health insurance to their full time employees, and many like Publix and Lidl also provide to part time workers. I know many part time workers aren't getting health insurance, but they aren't a vast majority of grocery store employees.
- MisterBastahrd 7y agoMaybe in the northeast or west that's the case. I worked for a major grocery store chain for 7 years, and in a store of over 80 employees there were maybe 20 full timers, including management. When you're making 12 bucks an hour, going halfsies on a $600 a month medical plan with a $5000 deductible doesn't make any sense.
- whytaka 7y agoConsidering the callousness of the average consumer, a pandemic would be the bale that breaks the camel's back. It's hard enough to deal with them already. Knowing how filthy the average human is even before the pandemic, the idea that they can now give me a lethal disease would be the dealbreaker.
- downerending 7y agoOn its face, this is probably true. But when the process is showing exponential growth, and quality data (i.e., deaths) is lagging by weeks, it's not unreasonable to be very conservative in one's risk estimate. Once the exponential phase has clearly passed, I'm guessing we'll start treating this more like traffic fatalities. As in, Yeah, tens of thousands die each year, and we could easily cut this in half, but why bother?
- shirakawasuna 7y agoThose are incredibly optimistic numbers. Remember, western countries are not testing sufficiently. Deaths are up by the thousands all over the place but they're not being recorded as COVID-19 cases because there was no testing.
- benibela 7y agoOver 1 million people died in road incidents worldwide Every time you commute, you are playing Russian roulette
- tyingq 7y agoI 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.
- strict9 7y agoThis 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 7y ago> 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?
- saagarjha 7y agoAnecdotally, I've seen much less junk mail, which happens to be a significant portion of the mail delivered to our house.
- Macha 7y agoDoes that get sent by the mail system? At least here it's mostly minimum wage folks employed by marketing companies (not the postal service) going door to door to put leaflets in. The postal service might add a flyer to your actual mail delivery, but only if they're delivering to your address anyway.
- WillPostForFood 7y agoA lot goes through the mail system. The Data and Marketing Association says American businesses sent 149 billion pieces of direct mail and nearly 10 billion catalogues in 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/how-to-stop-junk-mail-and-save-trees--and-your-sanity/2018/02/12/6000e4c4-05d9-11e8-b48c-b07fea957bd5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/how-to-stop-ju... This is just a counter-anecdote, but for every flyer on the door I get (once or twice a week), I get scores of pieces of junk mail. I assume you don't own a home, because that alone is good for 10 a week.
- alexandercrohde 7y agoWell, 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 7y ago> 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.
- downerending 7y agoProbably true, but better to push hard first on ways to lower the risk to workers.
- Der_Einzige 7y agoWhy 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?
- whytaka 7y ago> Well, these store have to stay open, no matter what. No, they certainly don't. What's necessary is that people get food. How they get it is open to discussion.
- Mediterraneo10 7y agoFood-delivery services in many countries are overburdened even with the local supermarkets remaining open. There may be room for discussion about a universal food-delivery system for future lockdowns, but right now supermarkets are the only realistic way for the population to get their sustenance.
- tpmx 7y agoThe 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.)
- andarleen 7y agoI have a hunch they will instead fire, or bully them into continuing working.
- gruez 7y ago>(And recruit healthy young people to temporarily replace them.) better yet, people who recovered from covid-19.
- shirakawasuna 7y agoJust close up shop entirely and go to deliveries / curbside pickup with full PPE protections, hazard pay, and economic protections for those who don't want to risk their lives for your oreos.
- cbdumas 7y ago> Just close up shop entirely and go to deliveries / curbside pickup Existing grocery delivery services are already way overburdened, and desperately scaling up[1]. > risk their lives for your oreos. You can't possibly think that going to the grocery store is so frivolous and unnecessary, as this statement would imply. Or do you? [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/13/833164484/amazon-puts-new-grocery-delivery-customers-on-hold-as-demand-explodes https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
- gwittel 7y agoIn 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.
- novok 7y agoAre the trader joes still not allowing the employees to wear masks & gloves / do you see any of the cashiers wearing them? When we talked to one cashier, before they started the lineup process, he said he wasn't allowed to wear a mask / gloves and it freaked him out, while he was liberally applying hand sanitizer to his hands. I haven't been inside one since that day, which is why I'm asking.
- gwittel 7y agoI’ve seen gloves regularly but not masks. No plexiglass dividers either. As the state guidance is now to wear masks when out (with stores free to turn away non masked customers) I hope they let employees use what they want (and supply it).
- mortenjorck 7y agoI went to a Trader Joe’s last week and the policy appeared to have flipped: I didn’t see a single employee without a mask on. Every register had been outfitted with plexiglass as well.
- gwittel 7y agoInteresting. Maybe it’s still being rolled out. They didn’t have this in SNV recently.
- kbuchanan 7y agoI 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 7y agoevery 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.
- wilg 7y agoso your belief is that information about deaths from a current pandemic or terrorist attack is not newsworthy? what do you think news is?
- jshevek 7y ago>so your belief is that information about deaths from a current pandemic or terrorist attack is not newsworthy? You misrepresent the parent comment. In no way did they imply that information about deaths is not newsworthy. We have more choices here than two extremes.
- wilg 7y agoI actually was asking a question of the parent commenter.
- jshevek 7y agoYou phrased your response in the form of a question, but in general that format doesn't preclude a commentator from misrepresenting another's views. Your comment was of the form: >"so [statement A]? [question predicated on statement A]?" In this case, statement A was a non-sequitur derived from an uncharitable interpretation. It appears at least three different people had a similar view, as I did not flag this comment.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoWe 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.
- cultus 7y agoListening 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 7y agoOf 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.
- voiper1 7y agoPaywalled. https://outline.com/2SY4ks https://outline.com/2SY4ks
- PaulDavisThe1st 7y agoThen again, here's Kevin Drum @ Mother Jones asking what he got wrong here: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/04/working-in-a-grocery-store-is-a-pretty-safe-job/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/04/working-in-a-... RTLD: 41 cited deaths among 3M grocery workers is a lower death rate than the population as a whole ?
- saalweachter 7y ago> Have I made a mistake somewhere? "At least" 41 deaths among 3 million grocery workers. I can't imagine we have anything resembling complete data for the number of grocery workers who have died. "At least 41" could be 42; it could be 500. Trying to draw conclusions on the relative safety of a grocery store employee versus the general public from that number is crazy.
- cbdumas 7y ago> Trying to draw conclusions on the relative safety of a grocery store employee versus the general public from that number is crazy. That's exactly what the Washington Post article is doing.
- ajmurmann 7y agoI'm immediately curious about the actual age distribution. Drum compares this to mortality for people between 20-65. My guesstimate is that grocery store workers are on average younger than the general population. I also wonder how many of the older grocery workers are taking time off.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoGrocery store workers aren't going to be looking at aggregate statistics to make their decisions or decide how they feel. They are going to be basing it on "Joe in produce died and we think it was Coronavirus." Then the entire store will be scared and it's not unreasonable because they probably interacted with Joe in produce at some point recently. A lot of people aren't getting confirmation by testing. Most people will self diagnose based on symptoms. This means that official data undercounts deaths from the condition and unofficial data overcounts death from the condition, but this is a case of "which way do you bet?" And when faced with a pandemic, the way to bet is "That guy with that cough who is now dead probably died from the pandemic. No, I don't need official testing to be scared that I'm next because I pulled a shift with him recently."
- neonate 7y agohttps://archive.md/rVsdx https://archive.md/rVsdx
- saalweachter 7y agoWe'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 7y agoWe 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.
- mikekhusid 7y agoGrocery 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 7y agoIt's probably not about death, it's probably about the no insurance and risk of bankruptcy by hospitalization they fear.
- thatcat 7y agoDoes workman's comp cover on job exposure?
- mikekhusid 7y agoThat's not what the article is about.
- SilasX 7y agoI seriously doubt that the dramatically increased exposure you get as a grocery store worker makes you safer, and suspect this effect reverses once you control for risk factors.
- mikekhusid 7y agoA more interesting and intellectually honest article would flesh this out a bit, maybe with actual evidence.
- SilasX 7y agoReally? Should they also "flesh out" that the death rate in hospitals is higher than in your home, even if they don't have the time adequately control for "people only being in the hospital when they're sick or nearly fatal to begin with"? Working in a grocery store rather than staying at home is, intuitively, less safe. If they're not able to carefully control for the risk factors, they're doing a disservice to report that figure by itself. And it's a non-trivial amount of work to do so such controls, simply to appease those who repeat over-clever contrarian factoids like that one.
- danzig13 7y agoThere 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.