cov19 business owner liabilities?

[Andy D]

Where I work, I think the business owner has done an exceptional job at protecting the employees and customers during this pandemic, at his own expense of keeping a minimum crew and others at home with pay.
I wonder about the irresponsible business owners though, who disregard the CDC suggests... It would be tough to prove how someone came to become sick, but could a business owner become liable is their employee became sick due to (possibly) them not following guidlines?

 

[jimbug72]

Interesting thought. I'm sure once this is all over you will have no shortage of lawyers trying to test that theory.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

In the medical field, where its pretty obvious where the workers are getting it, the employers are denying responsibility.
No doubt though, there will be many legit and frivilous lawsuits coming.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Hey andy,
Is your plane still trying to take off on the treadmill or did they cancel the flight?

 

[iPrintStuff]

In the UK there’s section 44 of the employment rights act. The main part of point out being;

“provides employees with the 'right' to withdraw from and to refuse to return to a workplace that is unsafe”

Assuming if your employer can’t make sure you can remain safe at work (I.e. follow social distancing rules etc) then there’s probably a legal basis for you to blame them if you get sick.

Granted if you’re allowed to refuse to go to work then they probably have an argument that you could have used that right.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

You'd have to prove you got the virus from work. They might also say "We gave you the option to stay home". Or, could turn it against you and claim you brought the virus to work and infected others.

 

[TimToad]

In the UK there’s section 44 of the employment rights act. The main part of point out being;

“provides employees with the 'right' to withdraw from and to refuse to return to a workplace that is unsafe”

Assuming if your employer can’t make sure you can remain safe at work (I.e. follow social distancing rules etc) then there’s probably a legal basis for you to blame them if you get sick.

Granted if you’re allowed to refuse to go to work then they probably have an argument that you could have used that right.

What if the employee stopped at a gas station on the way to work, the person who used the pump before them was infected and didn't take precautions?

Or stopped in a grocery store and bought some lunch items to bring to work and someone had touched or coughed on the pile of bread in plastic bags where the virus can live for days and days?

Or spent the holidays with family who also travelled to get to the employee's home and while not showing symptoms were carriers and infectious?

With an incubation period of several weeks and an infectious period even longer, there is no way to possibly know for sure where one caught it.

 

[signage]

according to OSHA an employer has an obligation to provide a safe working environment, not providing employees with proper PPE and equipment to disinfect they are putting themselves in a position for liabilities.

 

[Gino]

• Yeah and what if the employee didn't wash his hands after wiping his butt with his hand due to not having toilet paper ??
• What if people start running around yelling plague..... plague, I've got the plague ??
• We're all gonna die.
• The sky is falling, the sky is falling..................

 

[Andy D]

In a situation where an employer totally ignored CDC prodicale, threatened employees with termination
if they didn't show up to work & ended up having a high rate of infection among the employees... If someone dies,
I would think it could be more than civil liability, it could be criminal... no?

 

[Andy D]

• Yeah and what if the employee didn't wash his hands after wiping his butt with his hand due to not having toilet paper ??
• What if people start running around yelling plague..... plague, I've got the plague ??
• We're all gonna die.
• The sky is falling, the sky is falling..................

Gino I think you're joking?!? Maybe not, either way.. A month ago I would have agreed with you 100%, but
the more I have read, the more I understand how serious this virus is... from what I understand; this
virus is so very contagious & has a freakishly long "symptom free contagios cycle", that If we were allow this virus to run its course we
would have close to 100% of our population infected with it before it was over.

With a death rate of close to 10% for seniors, that means for most of us, even if we didn't die, we would certainly lose a spouse, sibling, parent,
uncle or Aunt, Grandparent, etc. & the ones who didn't did die, many would have lung damage that would drastically shorten their lives.

This long article says it better than I could:

Let me introduce myself: I am a practicing ER doctor with a Bachelors degree in cell and molecular biology/genetics and a Masters degree in public health in addition to my doctorate.

COVID is not a flu. Not even a little. Here are reasons why:

1. It is a separate species. It is no more like influenza than you are like a hippo. DIFFERENT SPECIES.

2. It is an airborne virus. This means the tiny droplets can stay in the air for a full 2 hours. So if a person coughed in aisle 4 of Target 1.5 hours ago, they may be home now but their covid cloud is still hanging there just waiting for you to walk by and take a breath. Influenza is not an airborne virus. It is droplet spread- meaning someone has to directly crop dust you with their sneeze to get you sick. Covid is much more contagious.

3. Covid is more virulent. Virulence factor is a measure of how catchy something is. For example, the flu is like beer. It takes a bunch to get you drunk. Covid is more like tequila - A little goes a long way. You need to suck up a lot of flu particles to actually catch the flu; with covid, even a few particles is enough to infect you.

4. Covid has a longer incubation than the flu. When you catch the flu, you typically get sick in the next 1-2 days. This is awesome because it means you stay at home while contagious because you feel like a heap of fried garbage. Covid has a blissful 5-9 days of symptom free time during which you are well enough to head to the movies, gym or mar-a-lago while also being contagious enough to infect everyone you encounter.

5. Covid has a longer duration of illness than flu. With covid, you have a 5-9 days of blissful asymptomatic contagiousness. This then turns into about 1 week of cough and overall feeling like hell but still surviving. Week 2 is when things hit the fan and people end up unable to breathe and on a ventilator. Many stay on the vent for up to 15 days. 5 days incubating+7 kinda sick days + 15 days on a ventilator makes for 27 days of virus spreading illness, (assuming your don’t just die of massive asphyxiation and body-wide collapse from overwhelming infection somewhere in that last week).The flu has an average incubation of 1-2 days and sick time of 7 days for a total of 9 infectious days. In the world of deadly viruses, that 18 extra days might as well be a millennia.

6. Covid is more deadly. A LOT more deadly. The flu has about a 0.2% mortality rate, meaning 2 of every thousand people who get sick with flu will die. On the contrary, the death rate from covid is reportedly 2%, so 10 times more deadly than flu. Ten times more death seems like a lot more death to me. What's more worrisome is that 2% is actually incorrect because it doesn’t kill kids so that skews the average. With covid, age is a major factor in survival. If we don’t include people under 30, the death rate for adults is on average 4.5%. 9 out of every 200 adults that get this will die from it. Do you know 200 adults? Do you think losing 9 of them is no big deal? Since mortality increases with age in covid, the risk gets worse as you get older so if we put 100 grannies in a room with covid, only 85 would make it out alive to make pies and tell great stories of the old days... and that just sucks.

I hope that helps to clarify is why covid is in no way a flu, why you are in no way a hippo, and why staying home is the only way for non-essential people to do their part while I spend my days at work covered in a plastic poncho, sucking air through a stuffy respirator mask, leaving my scrubs in my driveway, showering the covid off at 4am when I get in, and thinking to myself “now do u still think it was just a flu?” as I risk my own life with my face 2 inches from their highly contagious, gasping mouth while I slide the plastic tube down their throat and start up the ventilator.

Enough said...

 

[unclebun]

The thing is, unless the SARS-COV-2 virus acts like SARS and MERS and disappears on its own after the warm weather comes, it IS going to spread through the whole population eventually. Not necessarily until 100% of the population is reached, but at least until 60% or so is reached. Then it will have a hard time spreading further because it will fall upon people who can't spread it. But if it becomes a virus that returns year after year like rhinovirus and influenza viruses, we will just have to accept it as one of the things that can happen. Maybe an effective vaccine could be developed; we don't know because the most similar viruses, SARS and MERS, didn't stick around long enough for one to be developed and tested.

All of the isolation techniques being done now are aimed at slowing the rate of infection so we don't overload the medical system. We will not be able to eliminate the virus by social distancing.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

In a situation where an employer totally ignored CDC prodicale, threatened employees with termination
if they didn't show up to work & ended up having a high rate of infection among the employees... If someone dies,
I would think it could be more than civil liability, it could be criminal... no?

They are doing it in the hospitals right now.....

 

[Andy D]

Then it will have a hard time spreading further because it will fall upon people who can't spread it.

Google "coronavirus reinfection" apparently people are becoming reinfected!?!?

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Google "coronavirus reinfection" apparently people are becoming reinfected!?!?

Yup. That whole argument of herd immunity, not the fix. Im not holding my breath for a vaccine either. They never figured out HIV, sars, mers, ebola, herpes etc etc. gotta test, track and figure out how to contain it for future outbreaks.

 

[unclebun]

Don't just look at the headlines, especially not from the US press. Read articles like this one (from your suggested Google search) https://www.newscientist.com/articl...catch-the-coronavirus-twice-we-dont-know-yet/

It is likely that, based on testing in rhesus monkeys, that the body raises an immune response and there are measurable levels of antibodies to the SARS-COV-2 virus. The question is whether there is lifelong immunity or not. Not cited in this article but reported by others is that they have found humans who have recovered also have antibodies against the virus. That's how they are able to be running studies now where they are taking plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients, purifying the antibody, and administering it to current cases. This was also done to treat the original SARS in China.

Given the behavior of the immune system with other coronaviruses we commonly see (which are one of the agents that cause the common cold), immunity likely wanes after 12-18 months, though one scientist quoted in the article states he believes it will be lifelong immunity. Even if the level of antibodies wanes, the immune system still remembers infectious agents it has experience with, and upon subsequent reinfection, will mount a response more quickly. This is true even if the infectious agent is slightly modified, as is common with the influenza virus. The person doesn't get as sick then.

Here's another article to reassure you: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/ar...irus-may-protect-against-future-re-infections

If immunity wasn't developed, the number of new infections wouldn't have leveled off in the province around Wuhan.

 

[Jester]

2. It is an airborne virus. This means the tiny droplets can stay in the air for a full 2 hours. So if a person coughed in aisle 4 of Target 1.5 hours ago, they may be home now but their covid cloud is still hanging there just waiting for you to walk by and take a breath. Influenza is not an airborne virus. It is droplet spread- meaning someone has to directly crop dust you with their sneeze to get you sick. Covid is much more contagious.

This is the first time I've read or heard this. Please provide a confirming reference! Because my wife is freaking out right now based on your statement (and I'm pretty concerned, too)!

 

[ikarasu]

Truth is we don't know.

China said it was airborne awhile ago.... Who said it was not. Now who says it "May" be airborne. It likely is airborne to a degree, until labs confirm something for themselves they deny it - a lot of people have said it is, including who now. - a lot say it isn't... Unfortunately everyone is still Learning about the virus and nothing is certain. Next week they could say it's not airborne. Best to take every precaution you can... Better to go overboard than underboard.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cn...udy-shows-coronavirus-can-survive-in-air.html