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From New Yorker

From Vox

  1. January 7, 2022

Throughout the pandemic, there’s been a tension between public health interests and economic interests — despite the fact that there’s really no getting back to a normal economy until and unless the virus is under control. That tension has been on display, in part, with the CDC’s decision to change its guidance on quarantine periods for Covid-19. It now says people who test positive for the virus but don’t have symptoms need to isolate for just five days and wear a good mask for five more. Previously, it recommended 10 days of isolation.

The decision has come amid pressure from the business community, such as the CEO of Delta, which has pushed a change in guidelines in order to ease worker shortages and get sidelined employees back faster. Some critics have panned the CDC’s move as one that prioritizes corporate profits over public health. That may be true, but there’s also a tricky line for workers to walk — especially those without paid leave. For many people, missing 10 days of pay is an untenable proposition. If the US had paid leave for all workers, the scenario would be different — and brighter.

“If people are contagious and infectious, they pay the cost of isolating. But everyone else gets the benefit, and that’s not fair, it’s not efficient,” Sojourner said. “It leads to bad decisions from a social perspective. That’s true for workers, and that’s true for firms.”

There are ways to deal with the fallout, but the tools could be better

The good news about omicron and the economy is that we have much better tools to deal with the situation than we have had at other moments in the pandemic.

“There’s a bunch of low-cost, win-win strategies that can be used to protect health and promote livelihoods and keep the economy going, but they’re nothing new,” Sojourner said, citing vaccinations, boosters, and masks, among other measures. “They require work and resources to pull off, but to the extent you can pull them off, you improve health and the economy.”

If people do lose jobs or are laid off, they still get unemployment insurance. Extra cash that went out from the federal government during the pandemic is still helping as well. However, that money will start to run out, and more pandemic-related help from Washington, DC, is not on the way.

A senior White House official told CNN that beyond maybe “something small” for restaurants, economic supports such as expanded unemployment insurance just aren’t on the table because the economy is strong. That may be true, but the burden is not shared equally — people who can’t work from home are being pushed out to put themselves at a health risk to keep their households afloat and the economy running. And if they do get sick and have to miss work, that comes at an economic cost to them and to businesses as well.

“Fundamentally, we’re still in a world where people think the economy is made up of profits and corporate interests, and as long as we think about our economy in that way, we’re never going to get to a point where we’re actually providing the public health resources [along with] the big investments and labor market supports that actually help people thrive. And until we do that, we’re never going to get out of this situation in a healthy way,” said Rakeen Mabud, chief economist and managing director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank. “We’re really seeing how public health decisions that prioritize profits over people are stacking the deck against people and their families.”

For the time being, the country seems to be hoping omicron is a temporary danger for people’s health and the economy. We’re basically white-knuckling through it.

Yet we all need to know what to do in this situation. Even if you’re not worried about omicron’s effects on you personally — maybe because it appears to be milder, because you’re in a low-risk group, or because you think Covid-19 is inescapable at this point — it’s crucial to do all you reasonably can to avoid spreading it to others right now, especially anyone who might be elderly, immunocompromised, or unvaccinated. Testing capacity is currently very strained and some hospitals are already running out of staffing and beds. It’s really important that we not contribute to that crunch.

Experts aren’t suggesting Americans have to go back to a March 2020-style lockdown. Unlike at the start of the pandemic, we have vaccines and boosters that are highly effective at preventing serious illness and death. But they are advising people to be thoughtful about risk right now — both in terms of the precautions we take to avoid being exposed to omicron, and in terms of what we do if we have been exposed.

So, to get some clarity on what we should do in the immediate aftermath of an exposure, I asked three epidemiologists what they themselves would do. As you’ll see, there’s a spectrum of views here; within this spectrum, you can decide where you fall depending on your own risk calculus, the people you come in contact with, and the community spread in your area.

  1. I just found out I’ve been exposed to someone who tested positive — what’s the first thing I should do?

There’s broad unanimity on this front. “Don’t run to get tested. And don’t panic,” said David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

If you spent time indoors with someone and then find out they’ve tested positive, it’s possible you might get Covid-19 from the exposure, but you won’t test positive immediately after it. So if it’s only been a day or two since your exposure, the thing to focus on first is not testing, but the possibility of needing to quarantine — and the certainty of needing a good mask.

If you’re unvaccinated, or are vaccinated with two doses but not yet boosted, you should quarantine for five days and continue to wear a mask around others for five more days after that.

If you’re boosted, then you don’t need to quarantine, according to the CDC guidelines. But you should still wear a mask around others for 10 days after the exposure.

And yes, “wear a mask around others” includes others in your home — like children or roommates — if possible. Dowdy acknowledged that’s hard to do, but said his family did it when one of them recently had Covid-19: They opened the windows in the house, wore N95s, and slept in different rooms. “Not everyone will be able to do this,” he said, “but for those who can, it’s the ideal way to halt transmission.”

All that said, the CDC guidance has also led to other questions.

  1. The CDC says I don’t need to quarantine if I’m vaccinated and boosted. Is that really sound guidance?

When I asked the epidemiologists whether they agreed with the CDC on this point, they expressed a range of opinion.

“I think this is a safe bet. Boosters prevent infection from omicron very well,” Katelyn Jetelina, an infectious diseases epidemiologist with the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, told me by email. In other words, if you’re boosted, the chance that you’ll spread the omicron variant is significantly lowered because there’s a lower chance of you becoming infected with it in the first place.

Dowdy, for his part, said of the CDC guidance, “I think this is reasonable, depending on the level of transmission in your area. If you’re in the midst of a hot spot, it probably makes sense to quarantine even if you are vaccinated. But if transmission levels are low, this is reasonable advice.”

He added that it’s important to consider a couple of other factors in making your personal decision: first, whether you frequently come into contact with other people who could get really sick if they got infected, and second, if it’s been more than a few months since your last vaccine dose. “In either of these cases, it makes sense to quarantine, even if you are vaccinated,” he said.

Tara Smith, an epidemiologist at Kent State University, told me she doesn’t think we have enough data about omicron to know if the CDC’s advice is solid. “If you can quarantine, I would still recommend it,” she said.

“We did when we had an exposure just before Christmas. We all ended up negative but did not want to take the chance of spreading virus, and were off work and school with the holiday so that was easy for us,” she said. “Understandably, not everyone can do that, especially as many employers will no longer allow such measures. That’s why it’s important to be diligent about masking.”

  1. When should I take a test? What should I do if I have difficulty getting a test?

The best time to get tested seems to be about five days after exposure (or at any time after a fever develops). Just remember that tests — especially rapid antigen tests — are not foolproof. “Testing negative doesn’t mean you can go mask-free. You should still mask around others in public” until it’s been 10 days since the exposure, Smith said. “Even with a negative test, if you have exposure and symptoms, it’s best to assume you are Covid-positive and act as such.”

What about if you can’t get access to a test?

In that case, Dowdy said, “The best thing to do is continue quarantine for 10 days after any exposure. If you haven’t developed symptoms within 10 days, it’s reasonable to end quarantine at that time.”

With all of this, he said, there is a balance of risks and benefits — as well as personal circumstances — that must be assessed on an individual level. “What I’m describing is the ideal situation — for example, someone who can easily quarantine and continue working at home,” he said. “But most of us don’t live in those ideal situations, and it’s important for all of us to be understanding of others who may not have the same support systems that we have.”

Jetelina agrees that if you have difficulty getting a test, you should assume that you are positive and isolate until you can get your hands on one. “If you’re still asymptomatic after five days (and still can’t get a test), you can stop isolation as long as you can wear a good mask for five more days,” she wrote, noting N95s are the best option.

  1. The CDC says I’m supposed to mask up for 10 days after exposure. Is that really necessary?

Both Jetelina and Smith were crystal-clear on this one: Yes!

“This is incredibly important as you can still be infectious after five days,” Jetelina said.

We’re still learning about the transmission dynamics of omicron, and although many people will probably stop being infectious before 10 days have passed, “wearing a mask during that period will help to reduce any chance of spreading the virus,” Smith explained.

Dowdy noted that compared to other measures that could be enacted (like lockdowns), wearing a mask in public places is arguably not the hardest thing to do. So wearing a mask for 10 days is “the ideal,” he said, though he reemphasized the caveat that “we have to be understanding of people for whom this might not be possible.”

  1. What kind of mask should I wear? What should I do if I can’t get an N95?

The best bet is an N95. KN95 masks work great, too.

Even though these masks are in high demand right now, you can still order them from mass suppliers like Walmart or Amazon, or from retailers like WellBefore, Bona Fide Masks, DemeTECH, and N95 Mask Co. (There may be a shipping lag for some of these masks, so even if you haven’t been exposed, it’s a good idea to stock up now so you’ll be prepared.)

“Remember that the fit of the mask is just as important as the type of mask,” Dowdy said. “Wearing an N95 without fitting it to your face is defeating the purpose of wearing an N95 in the first place.”

If you can’t get an N95 or a KN95, the next-best option is a tight-fitting surgical mask (see this CDC video on how to adjust a surgical mask to improve fit). Adding a cloth mask on top of your surgical mask will further help eliminate gaps around your face.

If you’ve been exposed or tested positive, do not rely on a cloth mask alone to prevent you from spreading the virus to others.

  1. If I get a negative rapid test result, can I trust the result enough to go see, say, my elderly parents?

It’s important to remember that rapid tests aren’t perfect — and even with more sensitive tests like PCR, being negative one day doesn’t mean you won’t be positive in another day or two.

“If you have symptoms or a close contact [with an infected person], I would not trust one negative test,” Jetelina said, adding that it’s a good idea to retest at least 24 hours later.

Likewise, Smith said, “I would still try to mask around others if you have been exposed, when possible, especially if individuals you may spend time with are in high-risk categories.”

She noted that there have been some reports recently that sampling the nose isn’t sensitive enough early on to detect omicron infection, and that samples from the throat or saliva may detect it earlier. (Note that these reports are not yet peer-reviewed.) However, we don’t yet know if those early throat or saliva samples mean infected individuals are already spreading virus to others.

According to Dowdy, it’s “really a judgment call at this point” whether you should feel comfortable visiting parents after one negative rapid test result. You have to consider your level of exposure, your parents’ health, how long and in what setting you’ll be seeing each other, and how both you and your parents weigh the value of seeing each other against the risk of them getting sick.

“If your parents are relatively healthy and you haven’t been closely exposed (and are feeling well), it’s probably reasonable to trust that negative test result,” he said. “If your parents are much more frail and you’re living with someone who has Covid in your house, I’d wait.”

He said that while workers are using the current situation to eke out better pay and benefits, those gains are temporary and could be wiped out in coming years by inflation and layoffs.

“The only fundamental way to change the economic livelihood and the rights of workers is through the union movement,” he said.

Why now is the time

Of the many effects Covid-19 has had on America, how it’s changed the way we think about work might be among the most indelible.

Health care workers outside a care facility hold signs that read, “Quality care and good jobs for all. We are essential and united. 1199 SEIU.” Alejandra Villa Loarca/Newsday via Getty Images
Employees at Parker Jewish Institute for Health Care and Rehabilitation in New Hyde Park, New York, attend a vigil May 28, 2020, to protest their working conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The pandemic made work harder for many people and highlighted the longstanding struggles of workers across many industries. The ongoing public health emergency and its ensuing repercussions for health care workers finally shined a light on the industry’s long-ignored concerns: lengthy hours, incommensurate pay for health care workers like nurses, and the dangerous but crucial nature of their work. People who serve food and sell groceries for wages that are often too low to live on sustainably suddenly became inadvertent front- line workers, heralded for their bravery in the first waves of the pandemic (but largely forgotten in the subsequent ones). And workers who toil in e-commerce warehouses or offer delivery services became integral cogs to the US economy in an extreme way, as their existing complaints about inhumane treatment in the workplace went uncorrected.

Even white-collar workers, whose labor is often higher paid and objectively safer than many blue-collar employees, are experiencing high rates of burnout and mental health issues, prompting them to question work’s meaning in their lives and whether it was ever necessary that they commute daily from their homes to work on computers somewhere else.

And now, a record number of Americans have been quitting their jobs — 4.5 million in November alone, representing 3 percent of all employment.

There are also millions more open jobs than there are Americans willing to fill them. That’s partly because there are 3.6 million fewer people on payrolls than there had been pre-pandemic. Labor force participation rates — the share of the population that’s working or looking for work — are far below pre-pandemic levels.

The reasons for the decline are myriad. Older Americans — who were already on track to depart the workforce as they age — are retiring early, with people over the age of 55 accounting for about half of the decline in the labor force participation rate since February 2020. Many women have left jobs to stay home to watch children, and as the omicron variant continues to close schools and quarantine students, it’s keeping many of these women from returning.

Some people are making ends meet by doing gig work or by starting their own businesses, which doesn’t always show up on BLS employment situation data geared to payrolls, and can lack safeguards offered by traditional jobs, such as health care. Others are living off investments in the stock market and alternative assets. People have rented out rooms in their homes or loaned their cars. They’re surviving off savings they built by staying home during the pandemic and by collecting government benefits. Many are getting by on a spouse’s income, by moving in with family, or simply by making do with less.

At the same time, the economy is booming, meaning companies would need more workers even if they weren’t quitting in unprecedented numbers. This has given workers a lot more sway in the market.

“Because of the extraordinary circumstances, we are seeing a transfer of power,” Heidi Shierholz, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, said. “We’re in a really abnormal situation.”

Businesses are having no choice but to adapt.

“When I talk to leaders of companies, they’re literally panicking because they can’t fulfill their services. They can’t deploy their product. They can’t meet their growth goals because they don’t have trained talent,” Tsedal Neeley, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, told Recode. She said companies that preemptively make work better for their employees — higher pay, remote flexibility, other financial and social incentives — will have a business advantage over those that wait for their workers to demand those benefits.

“We have not completely grasped the tsunami of changes that have fallen upon us and that will continue to fall upon us,” Neeley said. “Work has changed. Workers have changed.”

Companies that can’t find enough workers have had to cut back hours and circumscribe their offerings because of worker shortages. Anecdotally, job listings on the hiring platform Indeed are increasingly urgent, using language like “immediate start” or “start today.” Employers are waiving requirements they used to have for job candidates, like degrees, experience, and even background checks. Workers who play their cards right have the opportunity to get the jobs they actually want.

As this is all happening, Americans are increasingly interested in — and approving of — unions, which will be able to fight for lasting change on behalf of workers.

Kenneth Hagans, a catering employee at the Caesars Superdome stadium in New Orleans, is trying to form a union with his coworkers in order to improve pay (he makes $12.50 per hour) and to attain benefits (he doesn’t have any). Even though he said his employers are short-staffed, they have not raised pay, relying instead on temp workers.

Hagans, who is 60 years old, has health problems and works two jobs when he’d like to just work one. He believes now is the time to form a union due to the poor financial circumstances many Americans find themselves in.

“Look at what’s going on in America — it’s not just happening to me, it’s happening in this whole country — people are being paid low wages, and everything is going up,” he said. “You went to the grocery store — you see how high groceries are. You buy a car — you see it’s $5,000 or $10,000 more to buy a new car today. So the wages need to come up.”

Unite Here’s Taylor believes that such factors could lead to an increase in union membership in coming years. Membership rates have been declining for decades, but ticked up slightly in 2020 — not because union membership increased but because union members were more likely to hold on to their jobs in the recession than non-union members. 2021 numbers come out later this month.

Joshua Bessex/AP

Starbucks employees and supporters react joyfully as votes are read during a viewing of their union election in Buffalo, New York, on December 9, 2021.

Recently, a company-owned Starbucks in the US voted to unionize, and more locations around the country have followed suit. Other ongoing high-profile unionization efforts and actions by workers at companies as far afield as online retailer Amazon, tech review site Wirecutter, and food manufacturing company Kellogg’s could lead to even more momentum in union formation.

“It lets people know, ‘Hey, wait, I can do something about this?” Cornell’s Creighton said. “Even though it’s a handful of people, it can create a spark.”

That said, more robust union formation faces severe obstacles.

“The way the law is written and has been interpreted over the last 86 years has made it so that it’s almost impossible, in the private sector in America, to form a union,” Creighton said. “Even with all of these labor shortages, which are helping give current workers more leverage, it’s still very difficult.”

National legislation that would make it easier to unionize is languishing in the Senate. Unite Here’s Taylor thinks strong union efforts will still prevail.

“If the labor movement, if unions aggressively organize [and] are prepared to have very difficult battles with corporate America — I do [think union membership will go up],” he said. “I think it really rests in our hands, even though all the factors are there to be successful.”

What the American worker stands to gain

So far, the labor shortfall in the past two years alone has already brought significant gains to many workers.

From February 2020 to December 2021, hourly pay for non-manager positions rose 11 percent on average for all employees (about double the typical growth for the equivalent time period). Wages grew most swiftly in the lowest-paying fields, like leisure and hospitality, which has seen pay go up 14 percent over pre- pandemic levels, though it remains objectively relatively low. (Inflation has pretty much wiped out these gains.)

Some workers in leisure and hospitality, which is known for often having bad conditions in addition to low pay, are getting more regular schedules and a clearer path to advancement because employers are eager to fill empty positions.

The specter of unionization has also forced changes.

Michelle Eisen, a barista at the first unionized company-owned Starbucks, in Buffalo, New York, said that when her store filed a petition to organize a union back in August, the company began answering some of their demands by solving supply chain issues, hiring more people, and offering seniority pay.

Eisen, who spoke to me while taking a break from picketing outside her store on Friday, January 7, says there’s still a lot of work to be done. Foremost is worker health and safety: She and other workers at her store walked out earlier that week because they had been exposed to Covid-19 by a colleague and weren’t allowed to quarantine with pay if they didn’t show symptoms. Starbucks corporate has disputed this claim, saying they did offer isolation pay.

Eisen and her colleagues have been contacted by hundreds of other Starbucks employees at locations around the country, leading her to believe her store’s unionization will lead to others.

Of her own decision to form a union, she said that poor working conditions had brought her to her limit last year. “I had two options: It was to either leave a company that I’d spent 10 years with — with people that I liked, in a store that I liked, with a customer base that I really enjoyed and cared about — or we can try to make some changes from the inside,” Eisen told Recode.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A KFC employee hangs a sign touting a sign-on bonus for new hires at the restaurant in Miami, Florida, on December 3, 2021.

These kinds of positive changes for workers aren’t limited to the service industry. Hiring bonuses and incentives have become increasingly popular. Some more progressive employers are seriously entertaining ideas about offering time off for mental health issues, shifting to four-day workweeks, and whether we should be working at all during the apocalypse. A college in Buffalo, New York, just moved to a 32-hour workweek.

Still, there is a long way to go and a lot more improvements to be made.

As long as the shortfall of employees continues — which experts told us could last at least a year, but likely longer — workers have a chance to make their jobs better, either by quitting and finding more suitable work or by joining a union.

It’s possible that US policy will change the future of work as well. Some politicians are floating ideas of offering universal basic income, which would set a basic standard of living for all Americans, regardless of their work status. There could be a future in which all Americans have access to parental leave and paid time off — not just those lucky enough to have jobs that provide those benefits.

Neeley, however, has little faith that policy will change. But right now, that might not matter. She said work is getting better because employers have no choice.

“Organizations have to respond or react to market forces or these exogenous shocks that started with Covid,” Neeley said. “If you want to hire, if you want to retain, if you want to meet your basic objectives in your organization, whether it’s a small business or these large enterprises, you need people.”

For some white-collar workers, that’s meant they’ve been able to attain long-sought-after perks like remote work, which enables them to save time commuting and have a better work-life balance.

At the height of the pandemic, more than half the workforce exclusively worked from home, according to survey data from Gallup. Now, approximately a quarter of employed people are doing so, while another 20 percent are working from home some of the time, in what’s called a hybrid model. We’ve learned from the pandemic that many more could work remotely — and the current situation is primed for workers to demand it.

But the unique advantages of this time won’t necessarily last. Depending on what workers, organizers, and politicians do with this moment, we could end up with a culture of work that’s better, or not.

“Now is the time where people are realizing, due to labor shortages and what they’ve been through in the last few years, that they could have momentum to change their working lives,” Creighton said. “It’s very important we do something now. Because if not now, when?”

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