Who is infectious? Unsettling situations Too Close to Home

By Shadeed Shabazz

It is hard to look past it: grocery stores, the long lines of the many silent eyes with most people wearing a face mask or a face cover of some sort. This unbelievable sight is our actual world, it just hit us out of no where and in the matters of weeks, our grocery stores have six feet lines painted on the ground as well as social distancing signs all over the place. There are lines way longer than usual and empty shelves that give stores an eerie vibe of everything being out of control. 

The way this has swept through communities is something out of a movie. At one of the Safeways in the Seattle neighborhood where I grew up, near my old high school, a company official confirms that a local worker died from COVID-19. He was a longtime associate at the Safeway store on Rainier Avenue South. This is too close to home, just one of the many unsettling situations happening around us.

It is not just nurses and doctors at hospitals that are getting infected because they deal with the sick, this is affecting people holding regular jobs in nearby stores. So when we must leave our homes to get food to survive, we are potentially risking our lives because we simply don’t know who is infectious within any confined space. And it feels near impossible at times to keep up with extensive precautions. 

 “It scares me, my coworkers, for any of us trying to make a living during this time,” said Patricia Estes, who works at the Fred Meyer in South Hill. “It’s very scary because you don’t know if you’ve been exposed and bringing it to your family. It’s very unnerving.”

I can’t imagine going into work in the current predicament and knowing that you are basically entering a battlefield facing war with a virus. 

Although Safeway has reported that they are sanitizing and taking so many measures to keep everything clean and virus free but that might not be enough.  Experts are saying that it may be time for grocery stores to ban customers from coming in. Some workplace experts, union leaders and small grocery owners believe it has become too dangerous to let customers browse aisles, coming into close range with workers. Grocery stores are still flooded with customers, some experts say, recommending it’s time for large chains to go “dark’ to the public, convert to curbside pickup and home delivery for food and other essential goods.  This might not work either because the grocery stores are only equipped with so many workers. They require way more for pickup service and online orders, requiring more hands to assemble what shoppers always loaded themselves. 

“Careless customers’ are “probably the biggest threat’ to workers right now, according to Marc Perrone, president of the

United Food and Commercial Workers’ union. According to the union, 85% of its grocery-store member workers report that customers are not practicing social distancing in stores. This is an outrageous number and at this rate, this virus is not going to get contained. Such reports are shocking to me. Such huge risk to lives and the fact that there isn’t a sure cure makes it so tragic. We have entered a dark time that flipped the world upside down, experts, politicians, doctors, scientists are all trying to come up with a quick plan to get everything under control.  The only solution is that every citizen does their part, participating in social distancing.

I’ll add my own story. I went to home depot to retrieve a tool that my mother needed around the house. As I park and walk up, there is a long line at the front of the store. A person telling people when they can go in. Ropes with warn people to make sure that they are 6-feet apart.  As I stand in line, I look around and realize that we are in a horror movie. I don’t even see signs that say “no guns’ and other signs I used to see.  Everyone is keeping their distance as they are afraid of the unknown.

I got in the store after about 15 minutes of waiting, as I am walking around, I keep hearing through the intercom “thank you for staying at a safe distance.’  And I just keep wondering how this became our new norm, thinking maybe I should have worn gloves because everything is being touched. 

This COVID-19 intrudes on lives so much that I can’t even go get a tool without being reminded that our world is at war with an incurable severe illness. I’ll try to avoid going to the grocery store or anywhere for that matter because you just can’t get away from it!

 

Shadeed Shabazz, 23, is UAF student athlete with the Nanook Men’s Basketball Team. Originally from Seattle, he’s shooting for his bachelor’s degree, majoring in communication with a minor in sociology. His off-court interests include listening to music, working out, and dancing.