Eight Amazon Workers Have Now Died from Covid-19 (sfgate.com) 103
The Los Angeles Times tells the story of 63-year-old Harry Sentoso, an Amazon warehouse worker who was called back to work on March 29th -- and died two weeks later of Covid-19.
Across the country, Amazon workers have documented more than 1,000 cases among warehouse workers as of May 20, and 7 deaths. Sentoso is the eighth.... The company has put new measures in place to make its warehouses safer for employees, but the number of cases at its facilities keeps rising... Amazon also fired two tech workers who had publicly criticized safety and working conditions at the company's warehouses...
The week before Sentoso died, the company began requiring employees to wear masks on site, and started checking the temperature of workers before they could enter. It began requiring employees to stay six feet apart in late March, and staggered shifts and canceled in-person meetings to make that easier. The company has increased the frequency of cleaning and disinfecting in warehouses as well, and began spraying down whole facilities with disinfectant fogs in mid-April.
But [the late Harry Sentoso's son] Evan, and a contingent of Amazon workers across the country, don't think that those measures are enough. Hundreds of workers at Amazon's facilities in Hawthorne and Eastvale, in Riverside County, have signed and submitted petitions asking the company to close the facilities for two weeks after infections for thorough cleaning and send workers home with quarantine pay. Following worker complaints compiled by the Warehouse Workers Resource Center, Cal OSHA has also launched investigations into both facilities...
The call for a shutdown has been especially loud at warehouses in Pennsylvania and New York that have become coronavirus hotspots, with more than 60 reported cases at each before the company stopped updating the tally even to local employees.
The week before Sentoso died, the company began requiring employees to wear masks on site, and started checking the temperature of workers before they could enter. It began requiring employees to stay six feet apart in late March, and staggered shifts and canceled in-person meetings to make that easier. The company has increased the frequency of cleaning and disinfecting in warehouses as well, and began spraying down whole facilities with disinfectant fogs in mid-April.
But [the late Harry Sentoso's son] Evan, and a contingent of Amazon workers across the country, don't think that those measures are enough. Hundreds of workers at Amazon's facilities in Hawthorne and Eastvale, in Riverside County, have signed and submitted petitions asking the company to close the facilities for two weeks after infections for thorough cleaning and send workers home with quarantine pay. Following worker complaints compiled by the Warehouse Workers Resource Center, Cal OSHA has also launched investigations into both facilities...
The call for a shutdown has been especially loud at warehouses in Pennsylvania and New York that have become coronavirus hotspots, with more than 60 reported cases at each before the company stopped updating the tally even to local employees.
Ok (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: REËEEEEËEEEEEEEE!!!!!111 (Score:1)
Eight out of 840,000 (Score:3, Insightful)
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It's 0.0009523809523809523%
Re:Eight out of 840,000 (Score:5, Interesting)
Is that a lot? My windows calculator tells me it's 9.523809523809524e-6. I have no idea what that means. Can someone here explain?
Explanation...
USA's deaths-per-1,000,000 is 319.
Amazon's deaths-per-1,000,000 is under 10.
Conclusion: an Amazon warehouse worker is 32 times less likely to die of COVID-19 than the average American.
These seems super unlikely given (US) Amazon workers are a subset of US citizens.
Re:Eight out of 840,000 (Score:5, Insightful)
They are not on average 81 year olds with 3 serious medical conditions.
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They are not on average 81 year olds with 3 serious medical conditions.
Neither am I. So why do I have to stay at home?
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"They are not on average 81 year olds with 3 serious medical conditions.
Neither am I. So why do I have to stay at home?"
Do you think these 8 Amazon workers were in their 80ies?
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That's why the government is putting the stay at home orders in place. The protect the weak from the selfish attitudes of the indifferent.
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Once you contract the disease, you can spread it. That's why.
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They don't even know who has it and who doesn't. Neither do you.
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This is how every virus works.
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Yes and for thousands of years, when humans have quarantined when facing deadlier diseases.
Because it's that or mass death.
Despite the measures we've taken and with about a 5% infection rate, 367,116 people have died, with 104,542 of those in the U.S. alone (yea- we have close to 1/3 of the deaths because our folks won't wear masks and keep breaking social distancing rules and because of the new york outbreak ( which came from Europe )).
Every virus doesn't kill between 0.8% to 1.6% of the population and lea
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Despite the measures we've taken and with about a 5% infection rate
Where did you get that number? Is it an estimate? Do you have a source I could take a look at? Thanks!
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Youtube - Doctor John Campbell- he went over a well structured randomized study on 77,000 individuals from all over Spain which showed that only 5% had or had had covid19 so far. Concentrations were about 10-12% in major cities like Madrid and about 2% outside of the cities. Average was 5%. Also allowed him to calculate the IFR. You can probably find it pretty easy by searching Doctor John Campbel Spain IFR on youtube.
Given an IFR, you can roughly back calculate the number of cases in a given area in t
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Re: Eight out of 840,000 (Score:1)
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Because a year and 50k dead is less than 2 months and 100k dead.
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Flu numbers seem kinda sketchy also.
https://aspe.hhs.gov/cdc-%E2%8... [hhs.gov]
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So what's the solution? Quarantine forever? COVID-19 is here now. We can't just hunker down and wait for a vaccine.
IMO the right solution is to carefully build up to herd immunity. Keep track of the trends and don't let the hospitals get overwhelmed, but aside from that let as many people develop antibodies as you reasonably can. The sooner it happens the less risk to the especially vulnerable who can stay quarantined during the build up if they wish.
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True, but I consider the way it's handled quite unfair. Sure, I could rejoice, I'm among the lucky ones whose job can be telecommuted and who can self-isolate infinitely while the plebs get to go out and toil for me, get sick and potentially die so they build up the herd immunity that I'll benefit of in the end.
Still I would prefer a solution that's fairer to everybody.
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Because this is not about an individual and this is not about death count, it is about the total number of work hours of the nurses and doctors. And other similar professions that are required.
Did you not watch how things went in Italy? Doctors and nurses were on their limits, doing extra long days, sobbing in the halls etc. In Russia doctors ad nurses are dieing and killing themselves (Note that official death numbers in Russia are extremely good, actually so good that most experts don't think they are tru
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Neither am I [high risk]. So why do I have to stay at home?
Good question. There are 2 factors: personal safety, and civic responsibility to avoid spreading the infection.
Here in Australia we have been successful, so you may wish to take a look. Schools are back fully open, as the number of cases is now very low, and children seem to be very low risk for spreading it. However adults will spread the disease, even if too young and healthy to be high risk from dying. Without any social distancing measures in the US, the majority would be infected, with millions of de
Re: Eight out of 840,000 (Score:1)
Re: Eight out of 840,000 (Score:1)
My wife didn't want to, so I cut it myself using a trimmer. Turns out I'm a better barber than my barber. I need more time than he did though, but taking travel into account it's about even. And I save a few bucks and the hassle to make an appointment fit my schedule and follow other covid measures.
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Nor 12 year olds, but anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
I notice about 27% of Americans are under 18, and therefore very unlikely to get sick from the virus. An equal percentage of Americans are over 65 and at higher risk, so those should very roughly cancel out.
Very roughly, I'd expect the total US illness rate to be similar to the 19-64 group (50%), since the younger and older groups cancel out. 19-64 is roughly the age range of most Amazon workers.
The incidence at Amazon is much, much lower than the population as a whole. It may be that not only are the workers not in high-risk groups, but also Amazon is a safer than average place to work.
50% of the population (Score:2)
Ps the (50%) I randomly had in that sentence was supposed mean about half of the population is in the middle age group. 45% would have been more accurate.
Re:Nor 12 year olds, but anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's not how averages work. I can't find breakdowns of COVID deaths and population by exactly the same years, but if we line up Kaiser Family Foundation data on total population [kff.org] with CDC data on COVID deaths [cdc.gov], we find that 0-25 ish people are 33% of the population and 0.14% of the COVID-19 deaths. 26-64 people are 51% of the population and 19% of the COVID-19 deaths. 65+ people are only 16% of the population, but almost 81% of the deaths.
So the 0-25 population combined with the 65+ population has 50% of
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> I can't find breakdowns of COVID deaths and population by exactly the same years, but
Thanks for tracking down that data and doing the comparison. I didn't have time (or particular interest) to track down exact numbers for each age group.
> That's not how averages work
That's why I said "so those should very roughly cancel out. Very roughly, I'd expect ..."
I wasn't saying that it's mathematically even, I was saying I would *expect* that it would end up to "very roughly" cancel out.
> 65+ people are
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Very roughly, I'd expect the total US illness rate to be similar to the 19-64 group (50%), since the younger and older groups cancel out.
Maths fail. Average rate is not the average of the rates for each component.
Consider if you fly to another city, and walk home. You average speed is less than double your walking speed, not half-way between the two.
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Conclusion: an Amazon warehouse worker is 32 times less likely to die of COVID-19 than the average American.
Totally beats the heck out of slaughterhouse workers' rates.
This story backfired on EditorDavid :) (Score:3)
This is funny. No doubt EditorDavid chose this story to hype up the "evil corporations" narrative, but David forgot that Slashdot readers know artithmetic.
Re:Eight out of 840,000 (Score:4, Funny)
What it means is that Amazon workers have been dying of covid-19 at a much lower rate than the national average. Do note that "national average" is about 1 in 3350. 840K Amazon workers should have resulted in about 250 deaths....
Of course, the point of TFA is to establish that Amazon is THE DEBHIL!!, Alas, the people who put TFA together have a hard time with basic math....
Re:Eight out of 840,000 (Score:4, Insightful)
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Basic math again. 25% of our deaths are people who are 80+. 75% are people who aren't 80+. Our 80+ people are about 12% of our population. So, a 79- person has about 40-low% chance of dying, compared to an 80+ person.
Which means that their 840K people, statistically, should have about 2400 deaths from covid-19. They have eight.
So, they're dying at about 1/300th the rate that could be expected from their demographics in the USA.
Sounds like Amazon is
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Which means that their 840K people, statistically, should have about 2400 deaths from covid-19. They have eight.
100,000 in a population of 330 million have died. Based on 840k workers that's an expectation that 240 would die, assuming the demographics of Amazon workers was the same as the US population (e.g. 2 year olds and 80 year olds in the workforce). However, 840k is the number of workers worldwide and it is only 250k in the USA, and the proportion of all deaths from COVID-19 that occur in the 18-65 range is 20% of the total. That means the expected figure would be around 15, not 2400.
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That's actually not a lot of people. Though we should be including those who get life-altering conditions from the disease that otherwise survived. And let's face it, Amazon should have been doing a better job of screening out their sick employees. I don't think any American employer has done the proper testing for that.
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At Amazon: 8/840000 = less than 1 in 100,000.
In the US: 105548/329968629 is almost 32 in 100,000.
From these numbers I propose that it helps being younger than average, above average standard of living, healthcare, and processes in place to protect workers.
P.S. A year from now these numbers will be irrelevant and we'll forget we even discussed them. Multiply the result by 10 or 20 or 100. could be any of those.
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Average individual income is around $32k/yr in the US, average amazon warehouse work is also about $32k/yr.
I think you need to take a serious look at where YOU are compare to the average person in the US. Maybe you don't realize how most people live.
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Ah, I see: "Apr 30, 2020 - At the end of the past quarter, Amazon employed 840,000 workers globally. Olsavsky said it has added another 95,000 employees since then."
OK... the total number of employees they used to have is not the same thing as the number of workers they have in US warehouses. The summary says "across the country... among warehouse workers."
I agree the story doesn't provide enough info to know whether 8 is relatively a lot, but 840k also isn't it.
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Keep in mind if only 1% of people are dying from COVID19- then 8 deaths means they have about 800 cases going in Amazon.
And while their protective measures probably lower the effective R0 (infection rate)- about 200 of those cases are completely without symptoms and if the effective R0 is >1, then it's growing exponentially in their work forces.
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So what are the correct numbers then? Or did you just come by to say "you're wrong"?
After a minute or so of searching, I came across this, [nytimes.com] which says Amazon has over 400,000 warehouse workers in the US. Now, I'm no good at math, but assuming the 8 deaths were all in the US, isn't that 0.002% of Amazon's warehouse workers that have died? Isn't the overall US rate 0.03%?
Something tells me that if I want to shelter in place, I should do it in an Amazon warehouse.
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Amazon Press Release (Score:4, Funny)
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No, he said he was going to lose a lot of money on stupid people.
Big difference.
Expected Values (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course this is not going to be accurate for a variety of reasons. First, the 330 million people in the U.S. includes children and young adults who are highly unlikely to die from COVID-19 or suffer any serious effects. Census data estimates would put the 45+ age bracket that's most susceptible at around 40% of the population, so the adjusts the expected deaths closer to 100 from napkin math. It's also necessary to adjust based on the average age of Amazon's workforce. There's no doubt that a substantial number are younger individuals that are unlikely to die or become seriously ill. It's really difficult to come up with a good figure on that, particularly given that the individual in this story is 63.
The point is, Amazon employs so many people that it would be more surprising if they didn't have any deaths. If someone were able to do a more thorough analysis, it's quite likely that they're completely inline (or perhaps even under if you believe that the U.S. is underreporting deaths) the expected amount of deaths based on the numbers that we have available.
Re:Expected Values (Score:4, Interesting)
From their financial filings, Amazon had just over 800,000 employees last year and it's probably much higher now given that more people are shopping online. .
Aren't you assuming ALL of Amazon's employees work in warehouses? The best figure I got (well actually the only figure which I got by asking Google) for the number of Amazon Fulfillment employees is 250,000 globally.
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Hard to believe that less than 1 in 3 are warehouse workers, but even if that's true, their death rate is quite a bit lower than average.
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Re: Expected Values (Score:1)
A quick search finds the NYT saying 1/3rd of all deaths are in retirement homes and about 8-10k are NY retirement homes.
Just something to think about when doing covid math.
I doubt masks are a good idea (Score:1)
I worked as picker in a warehouse decades ago. Not the most comfortable job in the heat and that was without the modern slave driving performance monitoring.
I'd take my chances with corona over wearing a mask, heat stroke will kill you faster.
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I'd take my chances with corona over wearing a mask, heat stroke will kill you faster.
Yes, because those are the only two possible options.
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At Amazon? Yup.
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They don't seem to even care about the quality of dry groceries that seem to get literally cooked in storage. Have had too many cases of things that taste off because they spent so long in a hot warehouse.
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You do not want to buy *any* vitamins from Amazon. They have arrived literally melted in the bottle during the frikkin winter at times.
Re: I doubt masks are a good idea (Score:2)
Picking on Amazon much? (Score:2)
How about retirees? How many of those folks have died from COVID-19? Clearly retirement is heartless and dehumanizing, so we should boycott and all go work for Amazon.
Re: Picking on Amazon much? (Score:1)
Must be an "Amazon Prime" thing (Score:2)
What's missing is that they have forgotten to ask customers to take their money elsewhere, because there is no point to order anything from Amazon when its workers don't want to work. I guess it got forgotten when they thought about getting paid in their absence...
The entire world suffered the same epidemic and we all are, workers and bosses, have to deal with the aftermath and find ways to return to normality. It's only selfish to demand extras in such a time and sets a bad example. When I was on the side
Giant (Score:2)
This is prompted by lawyers looking for another yacht. Stay the hell home if you are concerned about the disease itself. Otherwise it sucks to be human because there is a disease about with a tiny chance of killing young people, so a company with hundreds of thousands of employees will manage to lose a few.
So it's a safe place to work (Score:3, Interesting)
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Another meaningless Lynnwood comparison. How many Amazon workers live in nursing homes or prisons?
Also 50 countries higher means way over 100 countries are better. Amazon is in the worst 1/3.
Additionally your deceitfully claiming 840,000 but only 590,000 are in the US and count for the 8 deaths.
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Re: So it's a safe place to work (Score:1)
That's good Morbidity. Stats are here for USA (Score:2)
You can't really discuss this without a good handle on morbidity. Here are some stats:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fasta... [cdc.gov]
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/produ... [cdc.gov]
In general, for a population the size of Amazon's (1 million) and assuming a healthy age group (45-54) they should be seeing about 4000 deaths.
8 COVID deaths? Meh.
Statistically, for 800K employees, 6910 employees (Score:3, Insightful)
Statistically, for 800K employees, thousands of Amazon employees die every year. Not quite 6910 as naive extrapolation of the CDC death rate would suggest (Amazon is unlikely to employ very old / sick people), but thousands nevertheless.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fasta... [cdc.gov]
So this is rage bait for people who are too dumb to understand statistics.
8 dead == roughly 800 to 1200 infected. (Score:1)
If the IFR is 1%, then that means about 800 infections.
If the IFR is 0.8%, then that means about 1250 infections.
And how many died of normal cold in the same span? (Score:2)
More proof the stats on this virus where not being reported correctly from hospitals trying to cash in due to loss of revenue. They don't line up with any of the US based company mortality rates I have seen yet....
RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
I read the article yesterday; it was an interesting piece, and I got some perspective.
The bottom line in my book is that currently sick people go to work because they need the money. That has to change somehow; it is the primary reason the US has as many cases as we do.
But, there are what sure seem like not-so-masked unionization calls in the article as well: Sure, shut the warehouse down for two weeks and keep paying everybody. Sounds great! Not a realistic option at scale.
Santoso wore a mask (supposedly), but others were not. Amazon doesn’t really have a clue how many people have COVID, and likewise no clue how many have died from it. There seems to be a lot less social distancing at the warehouses (back in March/April at least) than there should have been, but the accounts are quite ambiguous.
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... Amazon doesn’t really have a clue how many people have COVID, and likewise no clue how many have died from it. ...
Why should they? It is against doctor-patient confidentiality. With these demands could any worker call in sick, tell them they have a cough and a fever, and they'd have to close their business until a diagnose was made. The pressure it puts on the workers, knowing they could cause their workplace to shutdown for weeks, is ridiculous. You'll end up with some workers abusing it and others trying to hide it out of fear.
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Exactly. The employee “covid-shame” alone could be enough to prevent notification, but the article essentially indicates all the employer knows is someone didn’t show up for work.
What should happen from a public health perspective is the case data gets forwarded on to the employer, and the employer can do some level of contact tracing for at-risk people.
Proof? (Score:3)
8 workers dead, 840,000 US Staff why is this a sto (Score:2)
Death rate for covid-19 in USA is 319/million. So this is below trend.
Had same issue in UK with false reporting of TFL staff.
Easy one for news editors I guess. Find a company you don't like and get death rate.
Americans (Score:1)
Causation without correlation. (Score:2)
Thanks, but no thanks. Post something with facts, not just supposition.