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Comment by zzzeek | Hacker News Reader

this fails to consider that if an employee of the store tests positive that has an implication for the store itself as well as all the food and products being sold to the public.

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Yes but the risk is lower then not having grocery store at all. People still need to eat.

right well to solve that problem, you close down one store and not all of them. only the one where someone tested positive and only until that store can be cleaned. There are no towns on the planet that have only a Whole Foods and not 350 other food stores. you open the store again once it's been deep cleaned. nobody starves and that's a total straw man argument.

It does not seem remotely workable to me to shut down every grocery store in America with a positive COVID test among their staff.

If you want to argue for less extreme measures, I will probably support them.

I think discarding any product said employee could have touched (eg. baked goods) and sanitizing the store would be cheaper than a full shutdown.

How will you track every product a cashier touched while ringing up customers during a shift? Every product touched while restocking shelves? Every cart touched while collecting them from the parking lot? Will you sanitize the store nightly or weekly? Will you communicate when you do to customers? Will you communicate when the last confirmed case was in your store? How often are workers replacing PPE and is enough available to them (if critical medical staff can't get it, how will you?)? Or are they handling everyone's products and payment methods with the same set of gloves during their entire shift? All important questions.

At this point I assume everything I buy might have coronavirus sitting on the outside packaging. I wipe every item down with a soapy cloth after getting home, wash fruits with soap, reheat meats that are not completely sealed, etc.

I think everyone should be doing this, there's no way to track possible infection through the entire supply chain but since the virus dies after some time, inner packages are probably safe if they've been untouched for a while.

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