I’m an occupational health doctor. I run a small consultancy and my clients consist of local SMEs and some larger corporates. We do a whole range of workplace related medicals, including fitness to work decisions. I have very serious concerns about how the COVID-19 response is impacting on business.
Background to the Problem
COVID-19 is now being treated as a workplace health hazard, similar to asbestos or pathogens in a biological laboratory. This could have disastrous consequences for the economy which relies on people being able to attend work.
The initial response of business to Covid-19 was reasonable. It posed an equal risk in any setting, and it was only natural that employers would need to accommodate the same sorts of measures to slow its spread as were required in all other aspects of life and in any other setting (i.e. frequent hand washing, minimising close contact with others, etc). Early on, employers responded quickly to enable their employees to adhere to the generic public health guidance when they were in the workplace.
However, there is now an increasing tendency for COVID-19 to be regarded as a workplace hazard. This is not entirely unjustified in certain occupational groups, where early data suggest there might be some increased risk, but it is striking that front line NHS staff do not appear to be such a group. My concern is that regarding COVID-19 as a workplace hazard on a par with asbestos or radiation is not helpful.
This obsession with COVID-19 as a workplace hazard has arisen for several reasons.
With the lockdown, the workplace suddenly became the most likely site of transmission of the infection for many people, but this is an artificial situation created by an extraordinary and necessarily brief adjustment to ordinary life – it is being reversed as we speak.
It may also have stemmed from the idea that NHS staff were at far greater risk of contracting COVID-19 because of their work role on the “front line”. I understand that we now know this to be unlikely. Workers are just as likely to acquire it at home, in the shops or on public transport.
Significant discussion in the media about PPE (personal protective equipment) adds to the perception that COVID-19 is a workplace hazard. As the term indicates, the aim is to protect the wearer from some external hazard in their work environment. How could we have such fevered debate about inadequate provision of PPE without there being a serious workplace hazard?
But, accepting a few occupational groups who may be at a marginally increased risk, COVID-19 is likely to pose the same risk to individuals regardless of work. There are other types of hazard which affect workers and non-workers equally, for example natural background radiation and seasonal flu. Neither of these are specific to the workplace (with a few exceptions such as aviation or specialised labs). Never once have I come across influenza virus being regarded as a workplace hazard, even though it is quite possible one could contract it whilst at work. Some companies offer flu vaccine to staff, but not because of a duty of care to protect their staff from contracting flu whilst in work; rather it is offered in the belief that it helps reduce sickness absence in the flu season.
During a national co-ordinated response to COVID-19, it is inevitable that workplaces will need to play their role in slowing transmission of the virus throughout the population, and this might make COVID-19 look like a hazard unique to the workplace, but it is not.
The Problem
An exaggerated perception of the risk that COVID-19 poses in workplaces will cause major problems for UK businesses and operations of all kinds.
COVID-19 (or our response to it) has transformed every workplace in the land into a high risk work environment. There are many types of high risk work environment – nuclear industry, asbestos removal, biohazard labs. We know where these are and generally the UK has excellent systems for protecting employees, but in all of these settings there is a significant support infrastructure in the background. You need health and safety officers, hygienists, specialist cleaning staff and doctors and nurses to assess individual fitness. Environments are risk assessed, adjusted and improved, cleaned and monitored. It’s a big effort.
The current perception of the risk posed by COVID-19 means that the entire UK’s place of work has become high risk, and borderline lethal. In fact, a laboratory processing dangerous pathogens would be a far preferable place to work. At least in the laboratory you know exactly where the pathogens are. You can isolate and contain them. You can easily identify staff most at risk (the one’s handling things in the extraction cabinet). This means the risk of contamination is extremely low, and your workers can be reassured that the threat is contained. Not so with the post COVID-19 workplace (which is now every workplace in the land) – here you have no hope of knowing where the pathogen is. You cannot contain it. You must put in place universal distancing and cleaning measures throughout every part of your operation. You must issue PPE, with all of the regulations surrounding the provision of PPE. You must screen every employee with an underlying medical condition to determine if they are safe to even enter the workplace.
The sense of risk to businesses is heightened by the knowledge that COVID-19 infection could even be RIDDOR reportable (formally reported to HSE as a disease caused by a biological agent present in the work environment).
Many news articles are perpetuating the view of COVID-19 as specifically a workplace hazard, and a particularly lethal one, such as this one in the Guardian.
Every single employee, returning to almost any workplace in the country, now needs to be risk assessed to characterise the risk to their safety. For many, this will be a quick process. But for many others with common, chronic health conditions (who will number several millions nationally), it will require significant resource to undertake assessments. As there is little guidance available and given the fear of a backlash from the media, unions, lawyers or the authorities, many employers will feel forced into excluding workers, even where there is little evidence that this is necessary. Employees may feel forced back in fear of their lives, whilst others will not be allowed back despite being desperate for a return to normality.
Final Comment
I am greatly concerned that the “new normal” will create an environment in which businesses will struggle to survive.
I can accept that workplaces need to make changes, and they must be encouraged to do this through reasonable means. I can accept that transmission will occur in workplaces and this should not be ignored. There needs to be accommodation for those shielding to remain at home. But employers cannot be made responsible for the misery of COVID-19, or blamed for its transmission in society. Businesses should be encouraged to play their role (and in my experience, they are – to an extreme degree), but they should not have to try and get the nation back to work whilst fearing sanctions because of a hazard that is universally present.
This week I’ve been wading through pages of medical guidance on how we can medically risk assess every medical condition. Alongside all of the other impacts, such as social distancing reducing office occupancy to less than 30% of normal, high sickness for months as self isolation policies continue, dealing with the palpable fear among staff, and coping with serious wider economic challenges, I struggle to see how this situation can be remotely sustainable for businesses.
I accept that for some workers, COVID-19 might make the workplace a hostile environment, and this needs prioritising and addressing. But I also fear that business itself is at risk of finding itself in a hostile environment, and one that many businesses will not survive.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Can art be deemed offensive? Or does it get a free pass as it’s all about the interpretation? More on the blatant attempt to erase the female sex with this article featuring quite a gross work of ‘art’ and what it symbolizes.
”Last year, Reduxx reported on a Reddit post featuring photos of a trans-identified male user breastfeeding his wife’s newborn baby.
The post, titled “Oh my God I’m breastfeeding my daughter,” detailed how the user worked with a lactation consultant and his gender physician for several months prior to his female partner giving birth. Immediately following the baby’s birth, the user said he had begun breastfeeding the child to supplement formula feedings. The user also included a link to a photo gallery showing snapshots of himself “breastfeeding” the baby.
In 2018, an endocrinologist from Boston Medical Center claimed that breast feeding was an important method of validating a trans-identified male’s gender identity.
In an interview with The New Scientist, Dr. Joshua Safer said: “Many transgender women are looking to have as many of the experiences of non-transgender women as they can, so I can see this will be extremely popular.”
Reports of trans-identified males seeking support from lactation consultant have increased. On social media, many new and breastfeeding mothers have also stated they’ve noticed an increase in men attending breastfeeding groups.”
https://reduxx.info/denmark-statue-of-man-breastfeeding-at-former-womens-museum-prompts-criticism/
“…many new and breastfeeding mothers have also stated they’ve noticed an increase in men attending breastfeeding groups.”
Well, it’s one method for a bloke to assess potential mates. Can’t imagine it’s too successful, though.
The thing is, there’s much talk of the erasing of the female sex and our role within society because of the trans activists and all who enable this ideology to wield such power, but what about the erasing of males? I don’t think a man preening and parading around in front of a camera wearing a dress and covered in slap does a great deal to strengthen the image and concept of masculinity either. Seems to me that rather than men placing the blame for how society is evolving into something seriously deranged and unrecognizable at the foot of feminists/women, it couldn’t be more apparent where said blame ought to be placed. Both men and women face a common enemy and that enemy is the trans loons, who are dead set on causing division and blurring the distinction between the two sexes out of existence. They don’t want equality they want dominance.
It wouldn’t last 5mins in many parts of the world.
And I do wonder how a statue like in the article would be received in countries, such as those in South America, where machismo is as alive and well as ever!
The people who fund,support,direct and protect the transvestite terrorists are our real enemies: without them the trannies would just be a midly irritating bunch of charmless inadequates.
Rich people with way more money than brains doing increasingly bizarre stuff to demonstrate to themselves that there’s nothing on this world they can’t buy with their money isn’t really that interesting on its own. It just serves as a reminder that we should really do something to uncorrupt our political and social systems as that’s the attack vector they employ to force us all to take part in their delusions.
On, perhaps, a more sensible note, I find it difficult to imagine why anyone would choose to drink this thin, metallic, dilute weasel piss in the first place.
Ditto most well publicised “popular” lagers in USA, UK, Australia etc.
The introduction of perverts to advertise this bilgewater is just the rancid icing on the filthy cake.
Grow yourself some taste buds and try some honest British bitter. Timothy Taylor’s “Landlord” a fine example. Also some fine Belgian, Czech, German etc beers for a change. Genuine Czech Budweiser Budvar is as different from this “light” American swill at is possible to imagine.
To be fair to Budwiser and Mulvany – he’s had quite an influence on Bud Light consumers.
Just not the one they intended.
Go woke, go broke.
“Bud Light has faced a revolt by conservative activists after partnering with transgender […]”
Sorry daily sceptic, you’ve got this wrong. IMO it should read:
“Bud Light has faced a revolt by conservatives after partnering with transgender […]”
The sales drop is massive and goes far far beyond “conservative activists.”
Who on earth are the ” conservative activists?”
Hopefully ALL conservatives.
Go woke, go broke.
That’s “Get woke, go broke”.
“Bud Light has faced a revolt by conservative activists…”
Why is it only conservatives and activists? Why not just people? In addition ‘activists’ are a particular kind of person that think ‘activism’ is some kind of career, similar to ‘influencers’. And both have a very high unproven regard of themselves.
https://youtu.be/JoI911uawTU
A very old YouTube grab of a clip from a Simpsons episode seems fitting! As I recall it was from episode where Mulder and Scully from The X-Files appeared.
Mulvaney’s nauseating parody of woman is bad enough but why isn’t anyone commenting on his total disrespect of sport in the ad, something I thought many Americans are particularly passionate about? I’m not sporty in the least yet I thought his comments downright insulting to all sports fans.
Spotted in a local Asda megastore yesterday – untouched stacks of Bud Lite. So it’s not just ‘conservative activists’ in the US. A real LOL moment!
They can just sell it on to the Eurovision venue. I’m sure it’ll go down a storm with its target consumer on the big night.
I used to like hanging out with trannies and deviants generally now I’m not so sure. I would say leave them alone and leave these issues alone. Obviously if they ever threaten you then treat them with full contempt.
Yes I know what you mean and it is important to make the distinction between trans folk who behave like normal people getting on with their lives like anyone else and The Mob, who are the ‘In yer face’, attention-sucking extremists who want to compete in women’s sports and invade their private spaces, brainwash kids into believing there’s 391 genders and pretend they are menstruating so insert a tampon up their bum with the aid of coconut oil. Yes, I wandered onto those videos on a Twitter thread. The former do no harm to anyone but the extremists, they’re like a new breed of bat-shit crazy and most definitely pose a risk to others, especially kids in their formative years and vulnerable people ( autistic young people and those in the mental health system, for example ), who are ripe for manipulation and indoctrination.
Right on the money.
There have always been a very few people who hsd a genuine issue with their sexuality. I think of Jan Morris who was a successful soldier before deciding to live as a woman. That is far as I know. Fabled trip to Casablanca for the “operation’?
Frankly I neither know nor care. But her books on Venice and the Venetian Republic are some of the best written.
But like most people in the same situation, she didn’t find it necessary to make a big song and dance about it or pretend that everyone else were the real “odd ones out”.
I’m all in favour of being kind to people who respond with kindness. But not, I’m afraid to raging perverts.
A valuable and appreciated comment.
Vomit inducing ads are maybe not the best idea for selling products.
I generally take people as they are. I worked on some documentary material about Blaire White some years ago. Blaire – in my head – I tend to think of as female. So I think it boils down to behaviour and how people treat each other by choice. Mulvaney is an over the top parody – a borderline pedo fantasy act pretending to be a little girl. Ten years ago, before such behaviour was politicised as ‘stunning and brave’, he would have been a random weirdo or a low-listed act act a drag act bar no sane person would ever go near..
What all of this reflects is the corporatisation of our lives. Corporations, in conjunction with governments, now sponsor ‘Pride’, for example, and aggressively push ‘diversity’ as a way of displaying their woke credentials. All this has done is pump vast amounts of money into emphasising our differences, dividing our populations into subgroups and making us all see each other as different.
I grew up watching 1960s Star Trek, where multiple races and both sexes worked together and no mention was made about the ethnic differences, because people had got past that and just accepted each other. I thought that was increasingly the world I was living in until – roughly – September 11, 2001 – where the freest states of the world freaked out at a reactionary force that attacked the West by dismantling everything that made us different from that reactionary force. Then the blatant psy-op that is social media came in that decade and swiftly became a way for employers to spy on their staff and governments to spy on citizens – but also allowed orchestrated outrage on an international scale.
And Mulvaney has perhaps emphasised how far askew our societies have drifted. If you don’t like Mulvaney and don’t use his made-up pronouns, you’re called a ‘bigot’ and can lose your career and have your life destroyed, because the state and big business now compel you to use certain words, rather than leave you to your own judgement at how to behave towards each person. Our personal interactions are effectively being policed by an overreaching state, with social media as its not-so-secret police. The Bud Light boycott emphasises the only power citizens have left. Rather than actively fight back, we simply no longer buy something. ‘Do nothing, as long as it’s the right sort of nothing!’
How far we’ve fallen!
Consumer activism swings both ways!
If Dylan Mulvaney wished to identify as a black woman would that be OK too? Dylan could perhaps wear makeup to help with the appearance?