I got to spend a week making daily visits to a hospital this summer, and of course ended up spending a lot of time chatting with the care team about the pandemic. For context, the room we were in was next door to the space set aside for the COVID-19 isolation cohort, and the some folks were back and forth between both areas throughout the day. As far as customer-facing jobs go this year, having your customers be, not just anyone, but specifically people who are a known SARS-CoV-2 infection risk, seems like a pretty singular situation.
They all felt pretty safe, though, and, at least up to that point, hadn't had a single staff member test positive. They attributed this to everyone on the team being very scrupulous about masks and hand washing.
Somewhat similarly, and less anecdotally, my state recently released some information about their contact tracing efforts, and, while they didn't give any specific numbers, they indicated that workplaces did not seem to be a significant source of transmission as long as mask policies are being followed. The bulk of the transmission was from social gatherings, both in home and in public. There were some case studies of super-spreader events at public gatherings, and the general story is that, as long as the staff is sticking to the policy of wearing masks while at work, they are generally not getting caught up in these events.
So, I suspect it would be fine as long as everyone involved kept a mask on at all times.
The problem with getting together for a Thanksgiving dinner, then, is that you simply can't share a meal and (properly) wear a mask at the same time. Heck, you can't even offer your guests light refreshments and have them properly wear a mask at the same time.
Nitpick: people commenting on things they don't know
You claim that people do not need to attend Thanksgiving. I guess the same goes for Christmas, or most family and friends gathering during the worst times of the pandemic. But this incurs a huge toil on mental health. People suffer.
I'm not saying to ignore restrictions and put people's will to meet above everything. But I think it's important to see what are we prioritizing. How we are considering that 40h of work are irreplaceable, but we must avoid seeing family and friends.
And how long can you sustain this? Imagine this needs to last one more year. A position where I'm forced to work undesired jobs during 40h per week under the threat of unemployment, poverty and starving, at the same time that I'm refused many social activities it's one where I'd rather kill myself.
It's a horrible position to be in, but I don't think it's silly.
Not silly at all.
Most jobs outside of transportation also limit exposure to a relatively small group of regulars like a neighborhood grocery store, so we're already in the range of acceptable consequences (since most people need to work to eat). Creating transmission links between disparate regions is outside the range of acceptable consequences (IMO, and for the first year at least)
Edit: source https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7362827/
vs
Thanksgiving aka the exact opposite of all of the above
Contrast that to crowding within 6 feet of 5+ family members unmasked for hours, traveling and spreading virus everywhere for a holiday that celebrates native americans giving food resources to ill prepared settlers?
What IS silly is that this is a holiday, it's a fun but nonessential day. Do you think Turkey day or Jesus's "birthday" (aka coopted Pagan winter solstice day) is worth the 1000s of deaths that they will certainly cause? The pandemic that has killed 250,000 Americans in just 8 months is far, far more important than a couple family meals.
But the point isn't that people have some risk, so adding more is OK. No — the goal is to not take unnecessary risk when avoiable. Eating turkey with family is something that you can postpone or even do over a video call if you have the means and still want some level of connection.
It sure looks a bit weird to ask this of people who don't work in isolation, but on the other hand it's not worse for them than for the WFH crowd. It could even be argued that it's worse for the WFH because the customer facing at least still get to interact with humans on a regular basis.
To this day, it amazes me that some people don't get that a nationwide travel and dine with a lot of people, could exponentially spread the virus.
We are almost 1 year later... And I think most people are here are well educated.
This saddens me deeply.
If they had done that, the Chinese lockdown probably wouldn't have needed to be nationwide.
I'm talking about smart people not realizing consequences from their own actions.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/china-quarantines-wuhan-coron...
Either way, I am surprised to see this comment on HN, I would expect people here to not look at it at the individual level, and think in terms of probabilities.
This criticism seems similar to the common one of "why are grocery stores okay but not concert venues: surely the virus doesn't know the difference?" Of course not, but buying food is, at least in the short term, more vital.
Large, well-ventilated space vs close poorly-ventilated space.
Not sharing food vs sharing food.
Not yelling at each other vs yelling at each other.
Everyone wearing a mask vs not wearing masks.
There are some important differences between workplaces and dinner tables.
Every little helps when it comes to public health messages.
And who is "blaming working people"?
COVID is bad, passing it to people is bad, wearing masks and distancing almost guarantees it won't transmit, masks and social distancing are nearly impossible at social gatherings where people eat or drink, so halt social gatherings so we don't overload our hospitals and get a bunch of people killed a few months before a vaccine is available. Really not much more to it than that.
Do you honestly believe that everyone can just stay home until we have wide scale vaccine? Who will make the vaccine, who will keep the water flowing, the power, the food, everything else we need for daily life
Lockdown has never, and will never be a reasonable strategy for a pandemic, this one or future ones
This worked in Europe for a few months, although all the tourism over the summer probably seeded the current outbreaks.
and "worked" in EU is an oversimplification of what has happened with out taking into account 100's of other variables
You can not simply do a base comparison of cases and say "nation X locked down, and Nation Y did not and that is why they have different outcomes" there is no factual basis for that statement
Should be pretty easy, given that so many people believe it.
Well, it didn't work forever, but one can clearly see that most countries of the EU locked down in March/April, which reduced cases massively. They then held cases at a low level until September/October.
This is much better performance than the US, where on a country basis, the numbers basically never went down, and are now increasing massively from a much higher base.
Sure, it's not causality but it's suggestive evidence.
Your interaction with an infected family member is hours in a close setting with poor ventilation without masks.
See: "56 coronavirus cases were linked to a Starbucks in South Korea. But employees who were wearing masks didn't get infected." https://www.businessinsider.com/56-got-coronavirus-south-kor...
The difficulty here is that there are some truly essential services, and there are some businesses that will die if not attended to, and we can't simply just let that all fall apart or people will starve. The government does actually have to grapple with questions like that, and even the best government will necessarily accept medical deaths to prevent a larger number of starvation deaths in the short term, or mass poverty in the long term.
The trick is adequately figuring out what is an 'essential service'. Really, it's more like figuring out what's inessential....
I'm lucky enough to be a Canadian and the CERB benefit has helped family members and friends who work in inessential industries like tourism that have been hurt badly by this. I support programs to help with that so those folks don't become poor. But no amount of money is going to let us close grocery stores, at least not without some other food logistics system in place.