Gensex Test :
Covid 19 and Essentail workers
Define Essentail Workers
Discussion/Describe the population consisting of essential workers
identify Structural issuses
Briefly identity social implications essential workers will have on society
References
Addiction providers
Aged care workers
Ambulance services (including air ambulances)
Care facilities (eg, rest homes / retirement villages)
Cemeteries and crematoria
Chiropractic services (emergency and acute care)
Community care coordinators and workers
Community Radiology
Correctional facilities
Dentists (emergency and acute care)
Disability Support Services
District health boards and all DHB provided and funded services and support staff
Doctors
Funeral homes
Health equipment producers, personal protective equipment (PPE)
Health and Disability Commissioner
Health Promotion Agency
Health Quality and Safety Commission
Home and Community Support Services
Hospital Health Services (including private, radiology)
Kaiawhina workers
Medical laboratories
Medical Laboratory Scientists
Mental Health and Addiction Services
Mental health providers
Midwives and maternity providers
Mortuary services
National Telehealth services, including Helplines, Healthline etc.
Needle exchange
Needs Assessment Service Coordinators (NASCs)
NZ Blood Service (including transportation)
Nurses and nurse practitioners
Optometry (emergency and acute care)
Paramedics
Pharmac
Pharmacy services (eg, pharmacies, deliveries, etc.)
Primary care clinics
Residential care providers
Funeral Industry
Structural
Social
During pandemic
Safety
Overwhelmed, especially in countries and cities that have experienced high death tolls. Such as New York In USA or Italy.
In New York Funeral homes and crematories are struggling to keep up with the amount of bodies due to the death toll.
Strucutral issuses that have been recognised within hte funeral industry such as but not limited to Some funeral homes making money off Low income famailies.
Directors are burnt out and exhausted.
They make money off the extras such as casket, hearses,wakes and embalming
Not able to offer these at present
Is family members gonig to veiwings gonig to infect me?
Most veiwings are canacelled and live streams of empty funeral homes with bodies are the new normal for funerals.
Are these corpses going to infect me?
Supermarkets
Food suppliers
Delivery drivers
Transportation
Only 1 'confirmed' cases of COVID-19 infection from corpse, Bangkok, Thailand. details have been withheld from the public.He was a medical Examiner.
Uncertainity
WHO and CDC have both said 'Corona Virus Bodies are probably safe but high risk careers such as embalmers nad medical examiners should wear Personal Protective equipment'
Unknown how long the virus is alive after some one has died.
20 people in Chenni India rioted a burail of a corona virus patient due to fear and belief that burying the body would cause the virus to spread.
False information or uncertanity about the dead bodies of passed Corona victums.
COVID-19
Dramatic increase in deaths globally, Vary of cases to death ratio place to place.
Mysterious Serious illness in children, Appeared in England , London. Could be inb relation to COVID-19 however it has only been seen in UK,Spain,Italy and Ireland.
The most conerning sympton is inflammation of the blood vessels and heart.
new disease do emerge and this could just be one of those , Professor Russel Viner stated it's less likely to be a new Strain targeting children.
USA
1,012,583 Cases 58,855 Deaths
Deaths doubling every 4 days.
Collective action.
Oxford vaccine
vaccine is adjusted from previous Corona virus vaccines.
Manufacturing in UK and USA is well developed, Just waiting on confirmation.
Hundreds of millions of doses needed and planned
NZ is third in the world for testing, 112.4 per thousand.
USA is third from bottom at 5.8 tests per thousand.
Employeed.
precariousness/Precarity
precarious existence, lacking in predictability, job security, material or psychological welfare
Considering leaving/ quitting due to health concerns and fear of contracting COVID-19
Essential workers have became more important and respected than celebrities in alot of western/western influenced societies.
Working from home is the new norm
Schools
identitfying the barriers some families face such as lack of access to technology.
Children who relied of school for food ( fruit in schools) are now going without
what are the effects on the education of those leaving school to go into higher education?
Exhaustion.
Uncertianity about returning to work.
Redundancy due to buissness unable to pay their employee's over this time.
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Students
The only class of people in New Zealand who still have to put them self into debt to live.
during the pandemic have not recieved any compensation to help live. While benefits and workers have recieved govermental help. that they do not have to pay back.
Health Care providers
Safety
Socail
Structural
During pandemic
Exhaustion
Stress
Unwilling to rest and irritability
Staff mental health is essentail to control infectious diseases.
Enough sleep and rest, uninnterupted
Personal protective equipment.
Essential workers are vital to ensuring society keeps running during the COVID-19 lockdown
Mass temporary burial on Hart island to try and cope with the death tolls in New York.
Societies fear of death and unacceptable with it causes concern about bodies being put in removable fridges to prevent decomposition before burial or cremation.
https://www.youtube.com/user/OrderoftheGoodDeath/videos
http://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/burials-funerals-under-covid-19
http://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/talking-about-death-during-covid-19
Catlin Doughty, Mortican, Owner of Clarity funerals and cremation, Los Angeles
New York funeral Homes have to turn people away due to the high death toll, and their storage capacity.
Questions
Political
Social
Safety
Where is the government?
How do they Know ?
Significant Changes in funeral homes such as Live streaming funerals and ceasing contact in person with bodies and funeral directors.
Is this going to affect the Funeral industry long term in relation to death and death related services.
Suspected inevitable "second wave"
Wear masks in public places.
National Awareness and mass education
Testing and Contact tracing
Co morbidity - Diabetes, Hypertension,Obesity
Good ventilation in public spaces.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Campbellteaching/videos
Dr John Campbell
SABC NEWS
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30078-X/fulltext
The Lancet - Psychatricty
Psychological pressures on staff.
Governments of countries political agendas feeding into the what preventive measures are taken in order to combat the virus.
In the Common wealth an increase of Sexaul and domestic violence.
New York
Random testing of 3000 people in public spheres to get a more accurate number of infected due to those showing mild symptoms or no symptoms that do not require medical care.
19.4 Million in NY State, 2.7 million infected.
NY State 13.9%, New York city 21%
Europe
Germany is cautiously opening public Spheres with mandatory mask wearing and the population well educated on their part as a community.
Russia has a poor health care and is on a daily rise.
With all the disposable PPE gear what will rubbish look like, will there be an increase in the amount of rubbish generated or are they able to be disinfected and turned into something else?
COVID-19 Tracking apps in some countries to help with knowing the risk of being in areas other people who are infected are in. Is a concern in countries like Turkey where governments are corrupted.
University of Queensland Vaccine
Produced high amount of Antibodies
Neutralized the virus in pre clinical trails
Strength of antibodies were stronger than antibodies found in recovered paitents.
In Countries like USA Food supply providers are generally of Ethnic minority
Somalis gravitate towards this work
Suspected chemicals used cause respiratory health problems
Crowded conditions
Poor ventilation
Limited access to hygiene facilities
Foreign/ Migrates live in dormitory styled residences
No masks are used in some cases
Crowded transport to and from work
Limited access to fresh food
Co-infected a possibility example having Covid-19 and Influenza. Can be a danger to recovery.
In March 26th 2020, Caitlin Doughty said in a video 'It's not helpful having a media narrative that is acting as if funeral homes are in pandemic conditions ' this was before deaths got really high in thre USa. She is located in LA and at the time had 7 confirmed deaths and none had been to her funeral services.
USA has a robust death infrastructure.
Why is detailed withheld, is there something that is being hidden and why?
why are some governments allowing their political agendas to dictate the preventive methods?
Soceity
Eating is more essential then Funerals
Humanity connection is important , people want to help but are helpless in most cases.
As a society we have to define what we value as essential as cultures and societies.
Misinformed about how to deal with COVID-19
No dead body is more dangerous than a living body.
consultations on the phone or through webcams.
How will these limitations and lockdowns affect life in the long term?
Can more be done to ensure the health and safety of those on the "front lines"?
Is this going to affect how people perceive death and the dead body long term?
American Society of transplantation has recommended that if you want to donate organs and tested positive or have active COVID-19 then your SHOULD NOT.
Dead body is treated in Society and culture.
fear of dying and death.
Hart island has been used as burial ground for indigent or unclaimed dead bodies for hundreds of years.
Issues with funeral business.
Sole responsibility of private businesses (funeral homes/ crematories) to manage the dead, they have limited storage capacity so have to turn people away when they have became to full. Refrigerator trucks are for Morgues and hospitals allowing their capacity of holding bodies higher however when a funeral home takes a body they are no longer able to keep the body in the refrigerator truck.
Crematories are running 24hrs a day 7 days a week and are still backed up by at least 2 weeks of bodies.
Crematories have to be owned by and within the area of cemeteries, due to most cemeteries being surrounded by residential areas there is no space for crematories to be added to help manage the bodies needing cremation.
https://ssc.govt.nz/resources/covid-19-state-services-workforce-guidelines/
State Service commission
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7139244/ Journal of Psychosomatic
More references
Misc/General
How does the corona-virus affect funeral workers? Is there special precautions in how they prepare the body?
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"And then I see the disinfectant. Where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute and is there a way we can do something like that by injections inside or almost a cleaning, cause you see it gets on the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs" ~ Trump
Can Essentail Workers choose to not work, If so what are consequences they might face?
Food Supply Chains
Structural
Safety
During pandemic
Social
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Fear of bring the virus home to their families.
Strained health care systems in areas hardest hit such as Italy.
Nurses in China found that they didn't need hte psychological help offered as much as trainig to help ease the patients psychologically. this shows a lack in training in psychological care , when people are faced with a potentailly deadly situation such as COVID-19 they are irational and generally will have psychological disstress.
Priortization of Protective equitment.
the limit of ICU beds and ventilators in countries affects their capacity of helping people recover.
Funeral homes are seeing an influx of people who died from COVID-19. Their families are grieving, unsettled, and struggling
But the number of families delaying funerals — along with the sheer number of people dying in the pandemic — puts another strain funeral homes: they’re running out of space to store bodies.
in Los Angeles, people are donating supplies and sewing masks to hospitals and hospice workers, sending them gift cards, and meals from local restaurants. In recent weeks people in cities all over the world have been gathering at their windows, on balconies, and from front yards at designated times to show their appreciation to health care workers with applause and cheers.
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Another way to help both health care providers and death care professionals who are sacrificing their own lives to care for ours through this pandemic, is getting our end of life wishes down in writing.
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Hospice nurse here with a timely question: for how long after the death of the host does influenza remain contagious? I had a call out this weekend on a patient discovered in the morning, already in rigor, and I realized after the postmortem care, etc., that he had been suspected of flu infection a couple of days before his death. I'm hoping that by the time a body is rigorous the cells no longer support viral replication.
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