Opinion
Dear Editor,I worked as an Environmental Health Specialist for the State of Virginia in Page County; as a technologist for Anchorage School District’s Student Nutrition Department; as Assistant Food Service Manager for Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office where I managed food production and safety for facilities which fed 11,000 inmates daily; and as an investigator for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. I retired from FDA in March 2017.
I am interested in any discussion of coronavirus as it is related to paid sick leave for foodservice workers. It seems that the persons who prepare and serve our food might be subject to the worst sick leave policies, i.e. no paid sick time. Also, these people may not have good, or any, health insurance. Certainly something to think about. While working for FDA, I traveled to China many times, including to Wuhan. I believe the numbers of cases/deaths there have been dramatically under reported, so it is hard to draw any conclusions from information provided by the Chinese as to infection/death rates. Wish our U.S. government would be more supportive of science and the federal agencies here who are working to come up with answers.
