Friday 20 March 2020

RANTS: FRONT LINE WORKERS NEED PROTECTIVE GEAR INCLUDING YOUR LOCAL GROCERY WORKERS



March 19/20—[Like a few hundred million people, I’m writing blog posts on My Corona!]
I was at the Shopper’s Drugmart yesterday and the clerk there—a chipper, always making jokes, friendly nearly-senior gal said, when I asked her how she was doing, that she just kept focused on the present and looked at the “small picture”; she didn’t want to think about the future, just get through each work day. I wanted to tell her that I was the opposite, that I always seem to want to look at the ‘big picture’ and that we balanced each other out, but instead I said something like, “well, that’s all you can do,” and for her to stay healthy.
I noted that she wasn’t wearing a mask and it seems to me that the service industry folk who are on the front lines, along with healthcare workers and first responders, should get dibs on masks and gloves and hand sanitizers. People in grocery stores, shops, pharmacies, need their employers to do all they can to protect them. Such workers should be declared “essential personnel” along with doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and so on, and should be protected in law, receiving the necessary protective gear and benefits . Some states in the US have recently done this. (For me, I’ll practice “social distancing”—Ah! The new words we all must learn—and keep to myself as much as possible, as well as using isoprophynal alcohol in lieu of hand sanitizers. It’s so little to help those who do so much.)

Cheers, Jake

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