A Seventh Amazon Employee Dies of COVID-19 as the Company Refuses To Say How Many Are Sick (theverge.com) 111
An Amazon warehouse worker in Indianapolis, Indiana, has died of COVID-19, the company confirmed. From a report: The death brings the known total of COVID-19 deaths at Amazon warehouses to seven, but Amazon's process for notifying workers makes the true number difficult to determine. Several workers at IND8 first learned of the death through rumors and say management began informing employees more widely only after being confronted. "They weren't going to say anything if it wasn't for people asking questions," says a worker at IND8, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution. Amazon has repeatedly declined to say how many warehouse employees have been diagnosed with or died from the virus. In an interview on "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday, Amazon senior vice president of worldwide operations Dave Clark called statistics on infections "not a particularly useful number." On Tuesday, 13 state attorneys general wrote to Amazon requesting data on the number of workers who had contracted or died of COVID-19.
Numbers in the absence of context... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just citing numbers in the absence of any context is little more than fear mongering and biased attack... Amazon has something like 800,000 employees... a very large percentage of which are warehouse workers. I'm not a fan of Amazon at all but headlines about 7 dead workers as though it's a huge number are misleading clickbait.
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The point is that Amazon refuses to give data that could provide context.
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There are things called "links" on that page. Here's one of them.
https://blog.aboutamazon.com/c... [aboutamazon.com]
Our top concern is ensuring the health and safety of our employees, and we expect to invest approximately $4 billion from April to June on COVID-related initiatives to get products to customers and keep employees safe. This includes spending more than $800 million in the first half of the year on COVID-19 safety measures, with investments in personal protective equipment, enhanced cleaning of our facilities, l
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Yep, no data about the current number of COVID cases in their employees. So still no context.
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Because they wouldn't know. Hospitals are the only companies that would have a clue what percentage of their employees have SARS-2.
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So why did you throw all that chaff then? It makes it read like this is just the fallback position if "baffle 'em with bullshit" didn't work.
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Just citing numbers in the absence of any context is little more than fear mongering and biased attack... Amazon has something like 800,000 employees... a very large percentage of which are warehouse workers. I'm not a fan of Amazon at all but headlines about 7 dead workers as though it's a huge number are misleading clickbait.
It's more of a headline about them refusing to disclose exactly how many are dead and sick than it is a bout a Covid bloodbath and Amazon. Oh, and I hope Amazon gets obliterated when a hoard of warehouse eating alien xenomorphs devours all their warehouses and their entire stock of product.
Re:Numbers in the absence of context... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's an equally unreasonable headline when there' no outcry for others to do the same... is Walmart reporting how many employees are sick and how many have died nationwide, is Home Depot, is Lowes, is Target, is PetCo or PetSmart, etc?
It's using 7 dead people to serve as some sort of rallying point for outrage against Amazon as the evil corporate villain of the day. It's not a discussion about the need for companies in general to disclose this info or that tracking this info would help us in some way, it's just a cheap shot using dead bodies to attack a company a lot of folks don't like for them doing something that's really no different than any other company out there.
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"That's an equally unreasonable headline when there' no outcry for others to do the same... "
Not when there has been very public outcry about Amazon's poor practices and disregard for the issue. You have complaints, you get scrutinized. Those other businesses you mention have all taken measure to protect against COVID-19 while Amazon has refused to take any special measures during this time when refusal to do so creates a high probability it's founder will achieve trillionaire status.
Re:Numbers in the absence of context... (Score:5, Insightful)
A few posts higher in the thread I've linked to steps they've been taking. They've already spent $800 million on COVID-19 procedures, which I'll guarantee is multiple times what Walmart, Target and Kroger combined have allotted.
You have complaints, you get scrutinized.
People complain about Amazon because it's in the rules that you're **allowed** to publicly complain without repercussions. Try that at Walmart and see if you still have a job tomorrow.
Re:Numbers in the absence of context... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more of a headline about them refusing to disclose exactly how many are dead and sick than it is a bout a Covid bloodbath and Amazon. Oh, and I hope Amazon gets obliterated when a hoard of warehouse eating alien xenomorphs devours all their warehouses and their entire stock of product.
The number of people that have have Covid19 and even the number that have died is not, and does not need to be, public information. The only folks external to Amazon they should be sharing that info with is the CDC.
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For that matter the number is almost certainly unknown. Physicians are not allowed to tell employers about test results without patient approval.
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While I think it's a good idea to share to the CDC.
is it legal to share it to the cdc from the company. or does the company have to get the OK from the employee to share.
Re:Numbers in the absence of context... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just citing numbers in the absence of any context is little more than fear mongering and biased attack... Amazon has something like 800,000 employees... a very large percentage of which are warehouse workers. I'm not a fan of Amazon at all but headlines about 7 dead workers as though it's a huge number are misleading clickbait.
The only meaningful part of the article is that Amazon won't give accurate figures on sick / dead employees. If the number is actually 7 dead then their mortality rate is less than 5% of the average American, which is most likely phenomenal. Once again even that is misleading since so many deaths have come from New York and most Amazon workers are in more rural areas (I believe).
But while seven deaths by itself is not evidence Amazon is handling anything poorly, Amazon not being open with this information is.
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Do you know a company that is open with this kind of information? I'm not a fan of Amazon as such, but I don't routinely hear about large companies saying how many sick employees they have. We know rough numbers for some meat packing operations, but only because the local health officials have released those, not the companies themselves.
Re:Numbers in the absence of context... (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be because the employers have no legal way to get those numbers. Doctors and insurance companies are not allowed to give out that info by law the 13 states attorney generals that have asked for that info are looking for a few minutes in the spotlight because Amazon can't give them what they aren't allowed to ask.
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How many Target employees have COVID-19? Or Walmart? Or Costco? Google doesn't seem to know.
I doubt Amazon knows how many employees have the disease, they don't have the ability to test everyone daily yet, although they're working on setting up their own testing ability.
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> Amazon not being open with this information is.
Are they legally allowed to publish that sort of information, even if they do have numbers? That seems more like information the local government would publish.
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Is there any particular context that makes
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Hmm... 90,0000 is to 330 million as X is to 800,000. X = 218, not "25,000." It's official, alvinrod can't do math.
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Hmm... 90,0000 is to 330 million as X is to 800,000. X = 218, not "25,000." It's official, alvinrod can't do math.
"90,0000" ? :-)
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They may know how many workers have not come into work because they died but they can't confirm if it was from Covid 19, It could have been part of the rising number of home invasions that happened right after those stimulus check where issues to everyone. I know no one that has died of Covid but I know 2 people that where killed for their stimulus money.
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They may know how many workers have not come into work because they died but they can't confirm if it was from Covid 19,
How would they know this again? Amazon warehouses are not small operations with hundreds of employees per shift in a 24/7 operation. Unless workers somehow keep track of all other workers on all shifts, they don't know who came into work AND why they didn't come into work. Bill from 3rd shift had to take a day off or Bill is dead. Unless someone knows Bill's family contacts, other workers won't know. In some industries, a worker's union would be primarily responsible for this. Amazon is fighting any attempt
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Heck, there are nursing homes in small towns with more than 7 dead.
But they aren't subject to "everything they do is EVIL!!!!!" headlines.
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And if the average Amazon worker is 70 and over you even have a point there.
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Heck, there are nursing homes in small towns with more than 7 dead.
There are probably Trump properties with more than 7 dead too. Not trolling, just sayin' -- it can happen anywhere.
Re: Numbers in the absence of context... (Score:3)
Does anyone die of anything besides covid these days? It doesnâ(TM)t seem as profitable to do so.
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>"Just citing numbers in the absence of any context is little more than fear mongering and biased attack."
It is just business as usual with the "media".
Just as misleading as labeling people already near death as a "victims of COVID-19" as if the normal flu or some other event wouldn't have caused death. Just as misleading as saying "COVID-19 is destroying the economy" when it is the REACTION to it that is.
The sensationalism and distortions do us all a disservice. There are real issues and threats with
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Stop posting numbers, I'm trying to build up a panic about my amazon deliveries here!
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It's less clickbait than lawyers fertilizing the ground for future lawsuits.
The fallout from this will be off the charts.
It's inevitable... (Score:1)
Is Amazon the worst employer alive? No, but they still could be doing more for their warehouse employees, including being more honest with both the employees and the press about the true number of COVID deaths. Yes, they're doing more than more other companies, but especially in such a crisis, with seriously how much obscene money they already have and ar
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Walmart is also running massive warehouses. UPS is running massive warehouses. QFC, Lowes, Home Depot Kroger, Costco... they're all running warehouses. Where are Lowes' statistics? We don't have them.
For "some reason" all we care about is Amazon. Could they be doing more? Sure. But it's mighty suspicious that only Amazon is being demanded of their statistics while their competitors get a pass. Smells like an operation by Walmart and legacy companies to attack a competitor through the media.
Re: It's inevitable... (Score:2)
There are a lot of people who benefit from attacking them and a lot of morons who will join the cause.
8 out of 800,000 with the most lax identification policy known to man mind. I am surprised more havenâ(TM)t passed to natural causes.
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They've already spent $800,000,000 and expect to spend far more. There's only so much you can do at one time while still paying attention to business.
HIPPO prevents it (Score:1)
Re:HIPPO prevents it (Score:5, Funny)
HIPPO prevents it
No, HIPPO only prevents discussion of rhino viruses, nothing else.
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I doubt it, these employees are dead and the information is anonymous aggregate data.
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It isn't just HIPPA (Score:3)
A quick search for what employers can legally ask an employee to provide about their health records bumps up against ADA and a number of other labor laws, as well.
Amazon (or any other employer) can check to see if you meet certain criteria (elevated temperature, coughing, etc.) and send you home to recover if you do. But they can't ask you if you were sick with COVID vs. any of the thousands of infections that could raise your temperature or make you cough.
If you die while home, your next of kin might tell
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But ADA, and other laws may still apply, even if HIPAA does
Fuck Amazon (Score:1)
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Narrator: After thinking about it for just under a microsecond, Amazon called this bluff and dared [random internet guy] to do anything about it.
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Boxed.com, Jet.com, Target.com... who else wants to start a list and "do something about it?"
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How many people at Apple are sick? Shut them down until they tell us!
How many people at Steam are sick? Shut them down until they tell us!
How many people at Sony are sick? Shut them down until they tell us!
Now do you get how ridiculous your demand sounds?
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They probably don't know and they are afraid to ask because if they did, this article would be about how amazon is breaking the law by asking employees about medical conditions.
If you order in the next four hours (Score:2, Funny)
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You wish. Any delivery times under 2 weeks are a wet dream.
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Not the employer's responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
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So during a pandemic, an employer shouldn't know if an employee is at a higher risk due to some medical condition? You know, so they could maybe take action and put the employee in a position that was safer for said employee.
Remind me never to work for your ass.
Re:Not the employer's responsibility (Score:4, Insightful)
If the employee doesn't tell them, then they shouldn't know. Hooray medical privacy laws!
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Do you really want to share your medical history with your employer? The "action" they may very well take is to move your name to the top of the list of employers to furlough/layoff. Hey, you'll be safer at home right? Even if you aren't... no longer their problem! Ditto for normal times when they might consider things like the cost of the health insurance plan or who they think might take a lot of sick days. Sure, it's illegal, but good luck proving it.
We have medical privacy laws for good reasons, yo
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"Employers shouldn't know the medical situation of their employees."
So long as we make the employers the payer of record for health insurance and not employees that is exactly who knows.
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Of course with a communicable disease the challenge is knowing which cases were acquired "on-the job."
No disclosure due to HIPAA (Score:2)
If an employee can be identified by anyone due to a employer disclosure, then that's a HIPAA violation, period.
Amazon has so few cases that anyone working with those people will automatically know/guess that the missing person has COVID. Bam, there's a fine. From a PR point of view that's worse, especially given the bizarre anti-Amazon stance by the media (including, apparently, /.).
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A single Kroger store in Michigan has three dead employees. Did Kroger volunteer that information? No, the local newspaper investigated.
How many Kroger employees have died because the company insists that they show up for work no matter what, didn't provide them with masks for over a month, and still refuse to require that they wear them? I'm sure that Kroger employees and customers would like to know but there doesn't seem to be any information from the company.
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A single Kroger store in Michigan has three dead employees. Did Kroger volunteer that information? No, the local newspaper investigated.
Yes because whatever some other company has done in some other place totally absolves Amazon from whatever it does.
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And yet many employers require a doctors note to take sick time. I'm willing to bet Amazon is one of those.
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Amazon is allowing workers who **suspect** that they might be infected to take up to two weeks off WITH PAY. I don't know of any other organization running large warehouse operations doing the same thing.
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Employers shouldn't know the medical situation of their employees. The states know who work for Amazon, and they have access to the protected medical databases, they should do their fucking job and crunch the data themselves.
Wow. I wish I had mod points so I could mod you "fuckwit".
For a start, employers generally know if people are not turning up for work. That's pretty basic information for the payroll department. Secondly, during an outbreak of a contagious disease not revealing whether you have a problem with the disease passing around your company should be an offence that lands you in jail. Thirdly, your assumption that the State knows so much about exactly what every person does inside their workplace is just plain stupi
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The other way to ask for special authorization to put workers lives at risk, which is what the meat packers are doing. After all Wendy's is out of meat. and the people have to have their engineered food stuff.
On the other hand, it is hard to know how much of the fault is at Amazon. Public officials are not modeling masks or so
Died of? (Score:3, Interesting)
Died of? Or died with? That's the first question.
Out of how many warehouse employees total? That's the next question.
Where did they contract it? And how? That's the third question. Were they some of the idiots going into Fedex or Kroger without masks, or with masks over their mouth but not nose? What makes it magically Amazon's fault?
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What spreads the disease is spending extended time periods indoors with infected individuals.
Here is my basis for saying that:
https://www.erinbromage.com/po... [erinbromage.com]
Re:Died of? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Died of? Or died with? That's the first question."
Not really. The number who randomly died of something else while infected with a fatal relatively short lived illness isn't likely to be significant. Not across a relatively small population of healthy workers handling heavy labor like this. If it were retirement communities in Florida you might have a better point.
"Out of how many warehouse employees total? That's the next question."
Yes, corrected for the average infection and fatality rates for the areas where those workers are located.
"Where did they contract it? And how? That's the third question."
That's the point of looking at the aggregate statistics. Everything else you mentioned would apply equally to the general population as it would to Amazon.
"What makes it magically Amazon's fault?"
Refusing to close or take significant proactive measures to prevent the spread of infection. This isn't just about Amazon workers, Amazon has made itself one a massive central hub for goods being transported throughout the country, failure to take strong measures, like closing, likely has lead to the deaths and infections of tens to hundreds of thousands of their customers. We aren't talking about a hit to their stock price, we are talking about extreme criminal negligence. The feds can seize Bezos stock on the basis he isn't legally permitted to profit from the crime.
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So making millions of Amazon customers step out of quarantine to go shopping in person would have been the responsible choice? Right.
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Where they could social distance, wear masks, and apply other controls while avoiding having objects shipped to their quarantined doorstep that have been handled by dozens of potentially infected hands? Yes, yes it would be.
There is also the option of not buying crap. Groceries and essentials have remained open.
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handled by dozens of potentially infected hands
So what? Do you know how long the virus stays viable outside the body? For most surfaces it's considerably shorter than most shipping times. The primary concern would be the exterior of the shipping package, which you can clean if you're paranoid. It's a far, far lower risk than going into an enclosed space like Target or (gods help you) Walmart for diapers or to refill a prescription.
So just 1/209 the death rate of NYC (Score:5, Informative)
Source: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page [nyc.gov]
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That is meaningless when Amazon is refusing to be transparent about infections and deaths, there is nothing to indicate seven is the correct number... not even Amazon's own claim.
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"That is meaningless when Amazon is refusing to be transparent about infections and deaths, there is nothing to indicate seven is the correct number... not even Amazon's own claim."
Repost because I have higher Karma than Amazon paid shills. If Bezos wants to shut me up he is rich enough to use a carrot ;)
that is the death rate for the general population (Score:2)
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The NYC death rate from COVID-19 in the age group 45-64 is 167.75, which is 1/191 greater than the death rate at Amazon.
There aren't enough cleaning supplies (Score:2)
Sure would be nice if we'd had some kind of "playbook" to address this.
Once we get those supplies they have to be used, but that gets expensive since you basically need a profession cleaning crew that is
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Since there is at least some possibility China did this as a deliberate act of biological warfare and that will always be a possibility for any foreign entity our playbook should have included maintaining the ability to source medical supplies and disinfectants locally. Who knows how many blankets... err masks they shipped us.
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This would be the worst biological weapon in history. The Chinese aren't as stupid as you apparently think.
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I'm amazed you think "cleaning supplies" prevents infection, they don't.
You stand close to someone and inhale droplets with high concentration of viruses. All the cleaning supplies in the world mean nothing to that.
the question of the age (Score:3)
Why would Amazon want to engage with Amazon-haters at all?
Why should anyone talk to the news media about anything?
More and more people are refusing to play the game. Amazon doesn't need to.
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We can easily estimate (Score:2)
I don't know how that number is particularly useful.
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One has to know the general health and age of the average Amazon employee and that of the reference population whose statistics one is relying on -- and also know the extent and accuracy of testing in that reference population.
There's going to be an enormous difference in SARS-CoV-2 infection rates and COVID-19 death rates between young, healthy warehouse workers and bedridden seniors in nursing homes.
Great job Amazon (Score:2)
They have 575,700 employees. 7 deaths is ~0.001%. At least 100x less than the predicted 0.1-0.3% mortality rate for COVID-19.
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Related story? (Score:1)
This is all in line with this story.
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
FACE (Score:1)
pfft, Amazon won't know (Score:2)
I'm with Amazon on this one. We just finished flu season. Who had a cold? Who had a flu? Who had this covid-sars-2? Unknown by an employer. Everyone who got sick didn't get a test, there weren't tests until recently.
On the other hand, the STATES know who is employed by amazon, it's in the tax records. The STATES know who died from the virus.
Why should Amazon do what the STATES could and should be doing? This is just attempt at blame and responsibility shift.
How would Amazon know? (Score:2)
How could Amazon know, reliably, who did/didn't suffer from/die of COVID-19?
Medical privacy laws and employment laws about disability etc pretty much prevent an employer from knowing these things. If an employee is off work due to illness, perhaps a doctor's letter may be required to remain on sick leave, but that letter is not going to explain if the employee's "inability to return to work for medical reasons" is due to COVID-19, breast cancer, HIV, or gonorrhea. Sometimes an employer doesn't even know if
How many US Government ones? (Score:1)
Because, not just the Government refuses to give data, no, not only that. They also suggest to inject you "light" and drink cleaners...
How many total? (Score:1)
So? (Score:2)
And where is the evidence those workers contracted the disease while working at the Amazone warehouse? I'll bet most of them contracted it outside during their own social gatherings...
Don't blame everything on the big companies, they aren't the cause of every major problem.
statistics (Score:1)
"Refuses to say" vs. "Does not know" (Score:1)
I am especially sensitive to this issue because I was once the one referred t