Essential Businesses during Covid-19
One of the most confusing paradoxes about the whole CV-19 panic is the designation by various state governors of what are referred to as “essential businesses”. They include those in such sectors as:
Healthcare/Public Health — hospital workers, health care providers, etc.
Emergency Services — Law Enforcement, Public Safety and First Responders and Public Works
Food and Agriculture — Workers supporting groceries, pharmacies, and other retail that sells food
Energy — Electricity industry, Petroleum workers, Natural and propane gas workers
Water and Wastewater
…and others
From the announcement made by the State of Washington,
“these sectors and the people who work in them are needed to maintain continuity of operations of essential critical infrastructure sectors and additional sectors as the State Public Health Officer may designate as critical to protect the health and well-being of all Washingtonians.”
Merriam-Webster (on line) defines the word essential thus:
1: of, relating to, or constituting essence: INHERENT
2a: of the utmost importance: BASIC, INDISPENSABLE, NECESSARY
So, it would seem that those people who work in the “essential” sectors are indispensable or necessary for the operation of these “essential infrastructure sectors”.
What’s the paradox? While everyone else (NON-essential people) is in lockdown for fear of contracting the virus,
it’s OK for the people who are most essential to the continued operation of our most essential infrastructure sectors to be exposed daily to the dreaded disease ravaging our country!
Critical to Maintain Infrastructure but OK to be at Risk
Does this make any sense whatsoever? The MOST critical people in the country are encouraged to be exposed to the virus. And they willingly expose themselves to it! What if they get sick? Essential sectors shut down? Are you kidding?
What happens if grocery store workers start to show signs of infection? Will the governors shut down all grocery stores? People will live off their month-long food storage, correct? They will harvest the bounty of their vegetable gardens, right?
And we won’t really need any law enforcement since all the cops are sick. Don’t bother going to the doctors since they are all sick also. If your power fails, just light candles and run your generators that you have maintained carefully and for which you have several months’ worth of fuel carefully stored?
So kill off the essential workers and let the rest of us get by as we can.
That’s a strategy?
P.S. My wife works in this “essential” area, so this is personal to me!
