Florida, United States.
Today when U.S is about to overcome sinister milestone of half a million deaths from Covid-19, It seems inconceivable for a company to prohibit this workers wear face masks.
However, this happened less than a year ago in one of the largest chains from Florida supermarkets, when the coronavirus spread around the world and terror began to install.
At the time Gerardo Gutiérrez, out 70 years, worked in one Publix supermarket branch in Miami Beach.
He died in late April afterwards coronavirus in March, that horrible month in which the pandemic, in what Italyto enter one national incarceration that caused an anesthetic in it We stand in which the deceased is in United StatesI still remember they numbered by the hundreds.
“We were all inside Virginor “, her daughter Ariane recalls, the plaintiff in a civil suit against Publix for wrongful death.
He claims that a colleague worked very close to it Gutierrez coughed and had others virus symptoms, but Publix then forbade his employees wear face masks, because “they didn’t want to scare customers “
“The result was that mmy father died “, the daughter tells AFP at her home Miami Beach. ‘I had gone to work every day without workno type of mask or gloves, and they did not allow him to use them. “
On March 23 Miami Beach it was the first flowery cityto order confinement and the beaches close.
But Publix waited until the first week of April to allow your employees use masks voluntarily, according to demand.
The policy change came late for Gutiérrez, who already i was very sickIt was hospitalized On April 10 and 28, he was fired from Zoom by his friends and family. He died that day.
“He loved it swimming. He was very active, very vital. Could have lived for many more years “Ariane says, showing photos of the father who was Cuban.
Two weeks ago, a judge dismissed a petition from the chain of supermarkets to handle the complaint as a claim for compensation from employees and not as one demandThe company did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.
“We keep paying”
Beginning of March Miami Beach he was still in the middle of his season more tourIt’s the time that students across the country take spring break and celebrate their childhood in the Florida beaches as if tomorrow doesn’t exist.
Much was said at the time about the inconvenient atmosphere of party of this island versus Miami, when much of the country first adopted norms of social aloofness – a term hitherto unknown.
“The people slowed down to watch out, “remember Ariane Gutiérrez. “And we’re still not over it.”
That month the businesses closed, the shelves were emptied and the mask shortage I know came back dangerouslyTherefore health authorities did not initially recommend its use to the general public, to ensure that the medical staff had sufficient stocks.
“That message at the beginning of the pandemic It was a big one strategic mistake from Public healthPurnima Madhivanan, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona, told AFP.
In a way, too mind blow in front of health workers and scientists, the mask became a political statement because Donald Trump, who was president, refused to wear it for months. Sometimes he even teased those who did.
“Those mixed messages confuse people,” says lan epidemiologist. And we keep paying for it. masks are essential. “
Living with Covid
One of the lessons from these episodes, according to the expert, is that “as much as we’d like to say that the science triumphsscience is only as good as the messengers who communicate it. “
A January study of the University of Southern California found that a large majority (80-90%) of Americans believe this wear masks is an effective way to protect you from COVID-19, but only half of them use them consistently.
This shows that “the knowledge is not necessarily behaviour”, lamenta madhivanan.
Initially it was believed that the climate warm killed the virus, that it was necessary to change the shopping bags, that race was a factor – it turns out that race inequality was the factor – and many, like Gutiérrez, suffered the damage from misinformation.
Some things have changed (who still disinfects tomato cans?), But others, like wearing a mask, should be just the same “normalized” in West as they are in Asian countries, the epidemiologist.
‘We will have to live with him covid “, dice. “There will never be a time when we can say the covid will be gone. We just have to learn to deal with it, like the flu.”