Why are the supermarket workers not getting sick?

[bulletjournalbilly]

So tell me this ...if supermarkets are a "danger zone" why aren't the supermarket workers all dying and getting sick with this "killer virus"?

Sadie789 - no, most of them have recovered now. They probably made lots of more vulnerable people sick, though, some of whom will have died. So what’s your point?

My daughter works in retail and has worked throughout lockdown. Three of their team of 12 have been ill, and she almost certainly brought it home, as I caught it despite not leaving the house.

Their store introduced protective measures very early on, including hand sanitiser, gloves, screens, deep cleaning and only letting a small number of customers in at a time.

An interesting point OP

zafferana - why would a supermarket have closed? Our school never closed when people went off sick. So why would a supermarket close? And what do you expect to see in the supermarket? Clearly ill people working there?! Of course they look healthy if they are at work. You can’t tell whether you are in a hotspot or not by wandering around a supermarket!

Is it goady fucker day today?

Supermarket workers are getting sick, stupid to think otherwise.

The ONS data makes it clear you're wrong OP, it's been posted for you, why haven't you acknowledged that? More supermarket workers have died than average and less teachers have died than average.

Our local newsagent died. He was male, Indian and in his 50s. All risk factors. Doesn't sound as fun to say "it doesn't matter if BAME people are dying" as it does if they're 65, does it? Since when was 65 old these days, to suddenly become expendable? The risks of an overwhelmed health service and businesses collapsing with a combination of unpredictable supply chains and unpredictable staffing is being ignored in this thread too; everyone needs to take some care in opening back up. Lockdown is easing now, have a little more patience.

@Walkaround oh it’s the sex workers who have made people sick and selfishly murdered 100s and not the clients who sought them out and paid a visit? Right.

You can’t tell whether you are in a hot spot or not by wandering around a supermarket!

No, but you can from talking to people, reading the paper and looking at statistics at a county-wide level, like this www.covidlive.co.uk/. I also know the faces of people who work in my local supermarket, because I've been going there for 10 years. I see the same faces each week, people I've seen there for years, so I know they're not going off sick in large numbers.

I know of several people who believe they had Covid around the time of lock-down. All either worked in London, were living with someone who worked in London, or caught it in hospital.

@RagamuffinCat

Very interesting post. Echoes my experience. And I am still left with a cough now. I was wondering if I had developed a touch of asthma due to after effects. I'm certainly affected in a way that I never was before.

I've looked after 2 supermarket workers, aged 40's and 50's in ICU. Both previously fit and well. Had only been to work and were being careful otherwise. Happily both made it but have a long recovery ahead.

RedToothBrush has posted the most very level headed comments on here.
OP, this must cross the mind of most shoppers and is a question with no specific answer due to lack of available information.
It could be one of the safest enclosed environments once safety measures were in place. I personally don’t see it as such but it doesn’t mean it isn’t. There’s no information we can access to get a clear answer.
My personal view is that supermarkets are not necessarily the most transparent of employers. Their staff is very disposable. The supermarkets wouldn’t necessarily start their own data collation on this because they don’t want to find out what the answer is and they are busier than they’d ever been. There is also the risk of alienating their customers especially as a lot of effort has been invested in setting up social distancing and hygiene measures. There is a lot to be said about the profit factor here. This is my personal view though as I feel supermarkets as entities (not their shop floor staff) could have done a lot better in terms of supply. They are the only visible business model to be in constant overwhelming demand, their customers are willing to pay any price, they have the mechanisms for large scale short term recruitment, they can replicate successful models at a reasonably fast rate etc, they are best placed to serve the consumer public and that would lead to even higher profits.

@lemonpudding

is it goady fucker day today

Every day is goady fucker day!

@Whatsthis1515

That's awful 🌷. I'm not even remotely surprised though. Over the years I've had some nasty DN's and only one really nice one. She was really interested in how I'd achieved such good control through a low carb diet and wanted to hear all about it. Her son had just been diagnosed and she was keen to keep him off meds if she could. The others though, just horrible!

I hope you don't catch this and have to
Go through another difficult period with your levels.

Take care x

They are....which is partly why thousands of temps have been hired to plug the gaps.

@Sadie789 - I was responding to your post about pilots and cabin crew, not your subsequent post about sex workers which ai had not yet read. But then you are clearly a goady fucker who deliberately takes offence without clarification.

As for sex workers, as I have already pointed out there has been publicity about both that and homeless people. Both clearly very vulnerable groups.

@RagamuffinCat you should take the antibody test and see if it was Covid. I know several people who had nasty respiratory illnesses around Christmas, but the only way to tell if it was Covid is to do the test.

Well the tills at our local Tesco are entirely manned now by teenagers presumably bulk recruited a couple of months ago. The regular ladies that are in their early sixties and late fifties are nowhere to be seen so either shielding or back of store away from the public.

Is it goady fucker day today?

Difficult to tell whether people are goady fuckers or pig shit ignorant fuckers (though I suppose the two aren’t mutually exclusive )

I agree with you op that people have lost all Perspective. So many people are looking at our daily figures for people dying from Covid, which can be higher than other countries numbers in their entirety, and not think it is an issue?

Well the tills at our local Tesco are entirely manned now by teenagers presumably bulk recruited a couple of months ago. The regular ladies that are in their early sixties and late fifties are nowhere to be seen so either shielding or back of store away from the public

That’s the same in my local shops. From the large Tesco, Icelands right down to the small ones.

@zafferana - try this from the ONS for a more accurate idea of your local area between 1st March and 17th April - it breaks things down into much more detail. Put your postcode in at section 6 (figure 5).
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19bylocalareasanddeprivation/deathsoccurringbetween1marchand17april

I’m so fed up with people talking about it ‘only‘ being people who are vulnerable, terminally ill, chronically ill, disabled, etc, as if it’s no big deal. Even if someone only has six months to live, why should they have that life taken from them because some selfish git thinks it’s no big deal? It says a lot about a person, when they think we’re over reacting, because it’s ‘only the vulnerable’, instead of thinking, “if I catch this virus, I’ll be ok, but I might pass it on to a vulnerable person and they may die”

If you can’t be arsed taking precautions, or you think we’re all overreacting because you don’t care if others die as a result, just have the ovaries to say it, instead of making excuses.

A B S O L U T E L Y!!!

Cabin crew stuck in planes filled with all nationalities with journeys originating from a multitude of countries? They should all be dead by now, surely...

Pay more attention.

Death rate for the infected population as a whole is 1%. For working age people as a whole more like 0.1%. For cabin crew in their 20s it would be 0.01%.

However older, male cabin crew would be at high risk. There likely aren't many though....

Or at least, an easier way of checking the areas around your own postcode district, as it has a useful map!

Approx. 20 DV murders over a period of 8 weeks. There were 173 DV murders last year, so there does not appear to be an increase.

Interestingly that was one of the sources I used a few weeks back when the apparent increase was reported. At that time police stats were showing nearer to 4 per week but if it was a glitch and I'm wrong I'd be very happy about that. My local organisation has dealt with an increase in requests for help after assaults, I don't know yet if that is replicated nationally.

but we should be careful about assuming that is evidence of an increase in that the raw numbers are small[...]

Oh I completely agree - it will be some time before we can derive a better picture of CV and CV related deaths as well as longer term health impacts.

The woeful lack of testing and confirmation of infection will make that far more difficult than it needed to be. In either case using the argument "lockdown is killing people get everyone back to work" is fallacious.