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FRONTLINE
Essential Workers Bearing Weight of COVID-19
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lex Marten is tired. You can see it in his eyes, surrounded by the telltale wrinkles of his unending shifts bundled in protective gear. You can hear it in his voice, no more clearly than when he responds to the elegiac praise politicians and corporate brands heap on health-care professionals like him in the days of coronavirus. “It’s a token,” he says curtly, “a way to show appreciation without doing anything to help us.”
send their infant son to stay with family. Marten’s decision-making operates around the calculus of the present moment. “We don’t want to become a drain on resources rather than an asset,” he said. Still, knows he is lucky to be insulated from the economic crisis that trails COVID-19. “I am thankful I have a job—I know a lot of people aren’t even able to work right now. At a minimum, the financial stuff, we should be sheltered from that.” Courtesy Eric Bennett
Eric Bennett stocks the shelves at a Shopper’s Value market in Clinton. While he sees the attempts at social distancing manifesting all around him, he says elements of daily life make full isolation impossible.
Marten, who asked not to be identified by his real name, is a nurse at a Mississippi hospital with several confirmed cases of COVID-19. He spoke to the Jackson Free Press about the experience of being an essential worker, exempted from the shelter-at-home order to care for patients in one of the highest risk environments in the nation today. “It’s personal for us,” he admits, speaking of his wife. As the novel coronavirus approached, they had to make the decision to
‘Unprepared for Catastrophes’ At Alex Marten’s hospital, which he declined to name, personal protective equipment is heavily rationed: nurses stretch out single-use masks for a week’s worth of shifts. Marten sees the structure of our health-care system as the source of the impending calamity. “It’s painfully obvious that no one was prepared for an event like this. Because hospitals don’t want to keep a supply of medical equipment that doesn’t see an immediate use,” he explained.
The phenomenon of “just in time” management applies to far more than hospitals; it is a cost-cutting approach that attempts to finely synchronize supply and demand to reduce overhead costs to a sliver. “It’s like running a Walmart,” Marten said. “You stock what you’re expected to use in a given timeframe. But that can’t prepare you for unforeseen circumstances.” This leaves hospitals in a terrible position to fight off a pandemic that calls for masses of protective gear, ventilators, hospital beds and trained medical professionals, Marten says, adding that he doesn’t have much hope for a market solution. “We are, on a business level, so used to operating on razor-thin margins, that we’re unprepared for these catastrophes,” he said. Marten worries that hospital administration is too removed to make critical choices. “The people that are making all of these business decisions aren’t the ones who are in the patients’ rooms, giving the care. They’re getting their information from middle-management,” Marten said. They, too, lack a clear picture of what health-care workers need, he added. To Marten, the problem is structural, and requires a structural solution. But individuals can do one small thing to make the work day easier. “People do appreciate offers of food. Safe, catered food is a big morale boost,” the nurse said. ‘Not Sure What I’d Do’ Eric Bennett works as a stocker at the Shopper’s Value market in Clinton. Three days a week, he joins his fellow essential workers in breaking down new shipments of food supplies and placing them on shelves, usually as crowds mill past for daily shopping. Bennett said in an interview that he has mostly remained calm through the pandemic, with some anxious moments. “There was a point when the first announcements went out that we could potentially end up quarantined, and all the panic buying happened,” Bennett said. “They had to start scheduling employees much more aggressively. That was my biggest fear. The more I had to be up there, the more likely I was to get sick. And if I got sick, my parents were going to get sick.” Over the weekend, The Washington Post reported that the U.S. has discovered the novel coronavirus in more than 1,500 supermarket employees since the beginning of the crisis, with thousands more quarantined after possible expo-
sures. Commercial unions are fighting for recognition of their food-service and grocery-store employees as first responders, in the hopes that this will give them priority access to PPE, including masks. Across the Jackson metro over the weekend, many grocery stores were in the uneasy rhythm of the shelter-in-place order. Signs announced responsible guidelines for distancing. Cashiers sheltered behind plastic shields separating the customers in their lines. Easter felt more like Halloween, with shoppers and workers alike clad in varieties of masks as they went about their day. But the insufficiency of our public spaces for a crisis like this was also clear. At the Ridgeland Costco, opened just in time for its first global pandemic, an effective system for moving customers through the checkout bank kept shoppers distant and protected. But everywhere else in the store where queues inevitably formed, people packed shoulder to shoulder, with little ability to stay more separate. Bennett has a mask, and Shopper’s Value provides its employees with latex gloves. “I’m less at risk than the cashiers are, but I’m out there on the aisles while customers are in the store, and I have to just hope they practice social distancing,” Bennett said. He acknowledged that most customers and employees are trying their best. But, he said, a certain degree of exposure is ultimately unavoidable. At the Jackson Kroger, the tight aisles are often filled with patrons. Nationally, the grocery chain announced April 7 that it was limiting its stores to 50% of their regular capacity. The impact was hard to see in the Jackson store the next weekend. Painter’s masks, surgical gear and colorful scarves aside, it felt much like any shopping day. Bennett, who does not have health insurance, said the federal guarantee that it would cover COVID-19 treatment even for the uninsured was a weight off his shoulders. But he admitted his lack of coverage was a gamble he continually has to take. “The likelihood of me needing health insurance is pretty slim. But if I were to come down with something serious….” Bennett paused for a moment, doing the same hurried risk analysis as the other 27 million uninsured Americans. “I’m not really sure what I’d do,” he said. Failing Rural America For Mississippi’s wage workers, the more FRONTLINE p 10
April 15 - 28, 2020 • jfp.ms
by Nick Judin
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