You want people to come back to work? Make it safe. It’s that simple.



It’s a real mystery why the Republicans (and probably a few Democrats!) who are arguing that lockdowns are out of the question (while new Covid-19 cases set a two-month record yesterday) at the same time aren’t doing everything they can to make workplaces safe.

Of course, the White House and everybody else talks about “safe reopening”, but the ugly fact remains that OSHA, whose job is workplace safety of course, has only issued one citation for a company that didn’t take proper precautions – and that was because they didn’t keep the right records, not for their actual practices. They refuse to make the CDC guidelines mandatory, assuring the country that businesses are doing the right thing anyway. Well guess what, many businesses aren’t doing the right thing.

The standard Mitch McConnell response so far has been to a) push to cut off the $600/week supplement to unemployment insurance payments, which expires at the end of July (meaning workers will have to return to work when their employers reopen), and b) push for legal immunity for employers, if workers get sick and sue (even though there’s currently a high bar for such suits to overcome, and I don’t know of a single case that’s succeeded so far). This is at least a consistent strategy, I have to give Mitch credit for that. However, I somewhat doubt it’s going to prove a big winner for Senate Republicans in November.

Yesterday, Virginia took matters into its own hands (so to speak) and put in place the first state-level workplace safety mandates ever. These include “sanitation, disinfection and hand-washing procedures”, and most importantly requiring the employer to notify workers with 24 hours of possible exposure to an infected co-worker. Since it’s not likely the Trump administration will force OSHA to change its ways, it’s likely that more states will follow Virginia’s lead. It makes all the sense in the world.

I was surprised to read today that car manufacturers are already producing at something approaching their pre-pandemic level! Of course, offering seven years before payments start doesn’t hurt sales. How have they been so successful at restarting?

Of course, they’re doing the right things. They might have done them anyway, but being heavily unionized, the workers understand that, if they don’t think conditions are safe, they can try to shut down the assembly lines (as has happened in some cases) or else not show up – and the union will protect them. So they will naturally feel much safer there, than they would if they were totally at the mercy of their employer, as they would be in Mitch McConnell’s dystopian paradise. This is a big reminder of why there are unions in the first place and will probably give a boost to union organizing from now on.

Once again, we’ll never fix the economy before we fix the virus.

The numbers
I’ve again omitted the table of projected deaths, since it is virtually identical to Tuesday’s (the total deaths projection through July is only .002% higher today than Tuesday). The actual numbers below are updated, as always. The big news is that new cases set a two-month high yesterday, exceeding 38,000. The 7-day growth rate in new cases is now back at 10%, after maintaining a low of 8% for about eight days ending just 6 days ago.

Of course, the daily deaths numbers will probably start growing faster again soon. The 7-day rate of increase in total deaths has been at 4% (its low) for about 10 days. It’s not likely to go any lower and will inevitably start to go higher. I just hope it doesn’t go higher by very much. But hope hasn’t been a great strategy for containing the novel coronavirus so far.

I. Total deaths
Total US deaths as of yesterday: 124,282
Increase in deaths since previous day: 806
Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 4% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above; it was 4% yesterday. There is a 7-day cycle in the reported deaths numbers, caused by lack of reporting over the weekends from closed state offices. So this is the only reliable indicator of a trend in deaths, not the three-day percent increase I used to focus on, and certainly not the one-day percent increase, which mainly reflects where we are in the 7-day cycle).

II. Total reported cases
Total US reported cases: 2,462,713
Increase in reported cases since previous day: 38,220
Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 2%
Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 10%

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:
Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 1,040,608
Total Deaths as of yesterday: 124,282
Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 11% (vs. 11% yesterday)
For a discussion of what this number means – and why it’s so important – see this post.


I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com

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