5 ms·

> Government policy around restrictions has been stupid since the beginning. I have friends that work retail floors who are required to work in person, but are

> Government policy around restrictions has been stupid since the beginning. I have friends that work retail floors who are required to work in person, but aren't considered essential, so no early vaccination. WTF?! Just because a job is deemed less useful, that doesn't make the people less susceptible... <rant> Corporate America has grown so greedy, so disconnected from reality, it hurts a lot of people without notice nor reprecussions. </rant>

RussianCow 6y ago
Don't get me started. My state (Oregon) has announced that the next wave of vaccinations will go to agriculture and food processing workers. I get why those industries are super important to protect from a supply chain standpoint, but it also seems insane to me that people in those specific positions get special treatment while workers in retail, restaurants, etc--who interact closely with potentially hundreds of human beings daily--won't get the vaccine until it's generally available to everyone. And if you're, say, a single food service worker in the city, it's not like you can afford to just choose not to go back to work.
- toast0 6y ago
  From my mind, agriculture gets priority because food is important and harvesting is time sensitive. Food processing gets priority because closures of large facilities due to outbreaks caused significant disruption last year. Kind of meh to reward an industry for having low spare capacity, but it is what it is. Retail, restaurants, etc workers have higher risks, but disruption is limited. Maybe a restaurant has to close (and several did over the past year), but there are other restaurants. Same for retail, even supermarkets. I think there's a limit to how many people you can prioritize over general population before people start really gaming the rules even though I know some people have been gaming the rules since the beginning. It's not reasonable to expect vaccination facilities to check patients' employment to determine priority, so it's going to be on people to follow them.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    Yeah, beyond health workers and old people - logistics around prioritization just seem like a disaster. You could do age bands to get old people in, but once they stop coming just keep expanding the age or open it up to everyone. I'm leaning towards favoring first come first serve. The early stories around people throwing out expired vaccine were awful.
    - lazide 6y ago
      Also, many agricultural workers work in tight quarters with each other, often with no meaningful PPE (and are usually poor with little health coverage or ability to even take a day off during peak season). A relative almost died because his wife (who worked in food packaging) got it at work and infected the whole family. This was in Spain in the summer. Actual agricultural work is rarely the ‘farmer driving his tractor in a big empty field’ - contract labor has pretty harsh working conditions in many cases.
  - brutal_chaos_ 6y ago
    What you're leaving out, and most states are, is the fact that these retail, restaurant, etc. workers may live with the vulnerable population (as is my case). My SO can't leave work (we need the money), but has to go on without a vaccine. We are each in our 30s, so no early vaccination (at least in Oregon), for young with underlying conditions. My SO is protecting herself as best she can, but every time she comes home from work, she has to hope everything went perfectly and she's not bringing it home to me. It's a bit like, "Shit, shit, shit! I was coughed on, talked to without their mask, etc. I hope all my protective gear holds up and my shower cleans me up before I see my SO," or more simply, "Shit, I hope today isn't the day I kill my SO." That's a LOT of pressure. Oh and so you understand how dire our situation is: we live in/share a studio apartment. Edit to add: The other industries have workers in the same situation too, I don't mean to disregaurd them. Those living with the (young && vulnerable) have to hope/pray/whatever they do everything right. And practically no state cares about that situation.
- kmeisthax 6y ago
  I live in Utah and remote work for a team predominantly in Pittsburgh. Last week, the Governor threw open the sluice gates and announced general availability starting today, so I grabbed a vaccine appointment faster than you can say "RTX 3060 at MSRP". I just got my shot today... so I naturally wondered if I should start obsessively refreshing the Pennsylvania vaccine page like I had been the Utah one. I'm already bugging friends and family in Utah whenever appointments are open, so I figured I'd Slack ping the entire company once Pennsylvania general availability is announced. I go and check... and that state's still in Phase 1A. Both states have similar per-capita vaccination rates - it's not like Pennsylvania is actually behind on shots, since the vaccine distribution in the US is based on state population. In Utah, we got 75% of 65+ before we opened it up to 50+ and people with pre-existing conditions; and about half of 50+ before today when we went to general availability. I say that the priority system did it's job: cases are down and the most vulnerable (old people) are protected. Every state should be moving to either general availability if they're at the same benchmarks, or at the very least an "anyone who can't work remote" standard (which would exclude my entire team, but w/e). (The ideal vaccination system would be to specifically target superspreaders. If we could do that, then we could achieve herd immunity at really low vaccination rates. However, that's still speculative since there is no diagnostic criterion for that and "just forcibly vaccinate anyone who violated a mask order" probably isn't a great proxy for superspreading.)
  - francisofascii 6y ago
    One consideration is the percentage of people 65 and older is PA 18.7% whereas Utah it is 11.4%.
  - jachee 6y ago
    Yeah, the entire population of UT is about half the population of the Philadelphia metro, and only about twice the population of the Pittsburgh metro, and that's not counting all the Penntucky between. As a nominally-healthy, young(ish), 100% remote worker, I'm focusing more on facilitating the more-vulnerable/eligible to get vaccinated ASAP, both to protect them, and to keep that curve growing toward herd immunity.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  From what I've heard, there has been big Covid outbreaks in food processing plants. Those workers don't interact with customers, but with each other. First link from a quick googling: https://www.bbc.com/news/53137613 https://www.bbc.com/news/53137613
- sedachv 6y ago
  > it also seems insane to me that people in those specific positions get special treatment "Food processing plants" (really, mostly slaughterhouses) had the largest workplace COVID outbreaks last year. This is how management responded: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/19/business/tyson-coronavirus-lawsuit/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/19/business/tyson-coronavirus-la...
- brutal_chaos_ 6y ago
  My state is Oregon too. Their process has been terrible.

RussianCow 6y ago

Don't get me started. My state (Oregon) has announced that the next wave of vaccinations will go to agriculture and food processing workers. I get why those industries are super important to protect from a supply chain standpoint, but it also seems insane to me that people in those specific positions get special treatment while workers in retail, restaurants, etc--who interact closely with potentially hundreds of human beings daily--won't get the vaccine until it's generally available to everyone. And if you're, say, a single food service worker in the city, it's not like you can afford to just choose not to go back to work.

toast0 6y ago
From my mind, agriculture gets priority because food is important and harvesting is time sensitive. Food processing gets priority because closures of large facilities due to outbreaks caused significant disruption last year. Kind of meh to reward an industry for having low spare capacity, but it is what it is. Retail, restaurants, etc workers have higher risks, but disruption is limited. Maybe a restaurant has to close (and several did over the past year), but there are other restaurants. Same for retail, even supermarkets. I think there's a limit to how many people you can prioritize over general population before people start really gaming the rules even though I know some people have been gaming the rules since the beginning. It's not reasonable to expect vaccination facilities to check patients' employment to determine priority, so it's going to be on people to follow them.
- fossuser 6y ago
  Yeah, beyond health workers and old people - logistics around prioritization just seem like a disaster. You could do age bands to get old people in, but once they stop coming just keep expanding the age or open it up to everyone. I'm leaning towards favoring first come first serve. The early stories around people throwing out expired vaccine were awful.
  - lazide 6y ago
    Also, many agricultural workers work in tight quarters with each other, often with no meaningful PPE (and are usually poor with little health coverage or ability to even take a day off during peak season). A relative almost died because his wife (who worked in food packaging) got it at work and infected the whole family. This was in Spain in the summer. Actual agricultural work is rarely the ‘farmer driving his tractor in a big empty field’ - contract labor has pretty harsh working conditions in many cases.
- brutal_chaos_ 6y ago
  What you're leaving out, and most states are, is the fact that these retail, restaurant, etc. workers may live with the vulnerable population (as is my case). My SO can't leave work (we need the money), but has to go on without a vaccine. We are each in our 30s, so no early vaccination (at least in Oregon), for young with underlying conditions. My SO is protecting herself as best she can, but every time she comes home from work, she has to hope everything went perfectly and she's not bringing it home to me. It's a bit like, "Shit, shit, shit! I was coughed on, talked to without their mask, etc. I hope all my protective gear holds up and my shower cleans me up before I see my SO," or more simply, "Shit, I hope today isn't the day I kill my SO." That's a LOT of pressure. Oh and so you understand how dire our situation is: we live in/share a studio apartment. Edit to add: The other industries have workers in the same situation too, I don't mean to disregaurd them. Those living with the (young && vulnerable) have to hope/pray/whatever they do everything right. And practically no state cares about that situation.
kmeisthax 6y ago
I live in Utah and remote work for a team predominantly in Pittsburgh. Last week, the Governor threw open the sluice gates and announced general availability starting today, so I grabbed a vaccine appointment faster than you can say "RTX 3060 at MSRP". I just got my shot today... so I naturally wondered if I should start obsessively refreshing the Pennsylvania vaccine page like I had been the Utah one. I'm already bugging friends and family in Utah whenever appointments are open, so I figured I'd Slack ping the entire company once Pennsylvania general availability is announced. I go and check... and that state's still in Phase 1A. Both states have similar per-capita vaccination rates - it's not like Pennsylvania is actually behind on shots, since the vaccine distribution in the US is based on state population. In Utah, we got 75% of 65+ before we opened it up to 50+ and people with pre-existing conditions; and about half of 50+ before today when we went to general availability. I say that the priority system did it's job: cases are down and the most vulnerable (old people) are protected. Every state should be moving to either general availability if they're at the same benchmarks, or at the very least an "anyone who can't work remote" standard (which would exclude my entire team, but w/e). (The ideal vaccination system would be to specifically target superspreaders. If we could do that, then we could achieve herd immunity at really low vaccination rates. However, that's still speculative since there is no diagnostic criterion for that and "just forcibly vaccinate anyone who violated a mask order" probably isn't a great proxy for superspreading.)
- francisofascii 6y ago
  One consideration is the percentage of people 65 and older is PA 18.7% whereas Utah it is 11.4%.
- jachee 6y ago
  Yeah, the entire population of UT is about half the population of the Philadelphia metro, and only about twice the population of the Pittsburgh metro, and that's not counting all the Penntucky between. As a nominally-healthy, young(ish), 100% remote worker, I'm focusing more on facilitating the more-vulnerable/eligible to get vaccinated ASAP, both to protect them, and to keep that curve growing toward herd immunity.
BurningFrog 6y ago
From what I've heard, there has been big Covid outbreaks in food processing plants. Those workers don't interact with customers, but with each other. First link from a quick googling: https://www.bbc.com/news/53137613 https://www.bbc.com/news/53137613
sedachv 6y ago
> it also seems insane to me that people in those specific positions get special treatment "Food processing plants" (really, mostly slaughterhouses) had the largest workplace COVID outbreaks last year. This is how management responded: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/19/business/tyson-coronavirus-lawsuit/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/19/business/tyson-coronavirus-la...
brutal_chaos_ 6y ago
My state is Oregon too. Their process has been terrible.