Still following the coronavirus nightmare. Like I said, the powers that be are not taking this serious enough. Especially in the larger cities. It is nice to tell people to wash their hands often and to avoid placing their hands near their eyes. But those are just cheap ways of dealing with the situation.
1. We are being told to avoid crowds if we are feeling ill. Impractical. For one, you can be asymptomatic and commuting in a crowd and transmit the virus to that crowd.
2. There are no incentives to stay home if you are feeling ill. Common sense should dictate that you do stay home and get better but with a lot of people having little or no sick leave or being afraid of losing their job if they actually stay home, people will continue to expose others just because they have to work.
3. There should be incentives for jobs to offer more work from home options and compressed schedules for those who cannot work from home. The trains, buses and subways should not be packed with potential virus carriers. Most people start work between 8-9 in the morning meaning they commute mostly between 6:30-8:30. We should push to have people work a 40 hour week with more flexible hours.
4. Some people still have no health insurance, meaning that there is another reason they can't afford to get sick.
5. With point number 2, I'd like to see a special leave developed for this situation. For civil service employees they wouldn't have to use their sick or annual leave. If you have 10 hours of sick leave and you get this illness you have a problem and a decision to make. If you work fast food you may not have the leave. For private industry maybe create a grant for companies to use to pay people who are sick. In both situations the ill employee just has to show a doctor's note.
Those are just a few ideas. Elected officials need to get creative and acknowledge what we are dealing with.
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