One of the biggest obstacles to new COVID-19 pandemic relief is the Trump and Senate Republican insistence that it be paired with lawsuit immunity for businesses that infect their own workers or customers. In the meantime, you might expect corporations to behave extra carefully, to prove to the public that they would not abuse such a law, and—ha, just kidding. Actually, businesses seem to be in a no-holds-barred race to see who can ignore customer safety most aggressively.
Amongst their weaponry: ordering workers to hide COVID-19 cases even from other workers. Bloomberg lists Amazon, Cargill, McDonalds, Target, Cheesecake Factory, General Electric, Delta, Smithfield Foods, and other companies among those alleged to have told workers to avoid discussing COVID-19 cases at their workplace. Despite employee complaints about each company, each is declaring itself innocent.
So, you know, as long as you trust some of America's largest companies (including a few of the most notorious employee-abusers out there) to be honest about these things, problem solved. Each of the employees who presented evidence of such policies just, um, misunderstood those messages.
Then you've got our institutions of higher learning, such as the University of Alabama's repeated notes to professors to not inform students if they are exposed to COVID-19 through a positive-testing classmate. The university now has 500 cases on its hands.
In the majority of cases, medical privacy laws are being cited as reason for withholding the information. That's ... dodgy, in many cases. It is certainly true that employers are not allowed to disclose the personal medical information of employees. It does not appear to be true that employers are barred from informing workers (or customers, or students, or anyone) that they may have been exposed. That is, after all, the point of testing and tracking.
Anyhoo, what does all this mean for customers? It mostly means that if there is a COVID-19 outbreak inside a business you frequent, don't presume you're going to find out about it. If you're a student, you might as well presume right now that your campus is swimming in virus. The lesson is to wear your mask and practice social distancing religiously, in public. Don't expect any of the rest of this to be sorted out anytime soon. Yes, we remain boned.
