A Worker in Amazon's New York Warehouse Has Died of the Coronavirus(vice.com)
vice.com
A Worker in Amazon's New York Warehouse Has Died of the Coronavirus
https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/y3zmp7/a-worker-in-amazons-new-york-warehouse-has-died-of-the-coronavirus
3 comments
Does your 1 million employee number include those in roles that have the ability to work from home or otherwise in an environment outside of the delivery/warehouse sphere?
Additionally, it is likely better to look at rates of infection or number of cases among Amazon warehouse employees. The “protective measures” implemented by Amazon are intended to prevent the spread and contraction of COVID. We can sidestep the difficulties of controlling for age and other factors with respect to mortality as you mentioned and instead evaluate the efficacy of Amazon’s protective measures by examining infection rates.
Additionally, it is likely better to look at rates of infection or number of cases among Amazon warehouse employees. The “protective measures” implemented by Amazon are intended to prevent the spread and contraction of COVID. We can sidestep the difficulties of controlling for age and other factors with respect to mortality as you mentioned and instead evaluate the efficacy of Amazon’s protective measures by examining infection rates.
From the title, it reads like the warehouse worker died at the warehouse. According to the article "company said that the employee who died hadn’t been at the warehouse since April 11".
'providing “inadequate” protections to its workers under state law'...
What is "adequate"? What would be adequate from any company? We are quick to say inadequate, but at what level would we say "sure XYZ company did adequate job at protecting employees"? The answer is never. The only "permitted solution" is complete company shutdown. But, would we stand for that? Would we tolerate Amazon shuttering her doors until this is over? I highly doubt it.
This bothers me not only for Amazon for pretty much any politician's perspective. What is "adequate"?
What is "adequate"? What would be adequate from any company? We are quick to say inadequate, but at what level would we say "sure XYZ company did adequate job at protecting employees"? The answer is never. The only "permitted solution" is complete company shutdown. But, would we stand for that? Would we tolerate Amazon shuttering her doors until this is over? I highly doubt it.
This bothers me not only for Amazon for pretty much any politician's perspective. What is "adequate"?
First off, it is extremely sad that a coworker died. Obviously every death is a tragedy and I would not want to diminish that at all.
With that said, I have been reading the same news stories you have and was curious to know how well Amazon is doing at keeping my coworkers in essential roles safe.
This article, and others I've read, cite 2 fatal Covid Cases. I believe the most recent estimates for Amazon's employee count put it at around 1,000,000 employees. To be conservative I'll say 950,000. 2/950000 = 0.0000021053, so 0.0002% of Amazon employees have died that we know of.
70,000 people in the USA have died of Covid from the numbers I see today. Assuming a US population of 330,000,000 we do the math (70000/330000000) and get 0.000212121 or 0.02% of US residents have died of Covid.
This obviously does not weigh things like age range, etc. but I seeing that my fellow employees are 1/100 as likely to have died of Covid as the average US resident makes me feel good about how effective the protective measures are.