Essential Personnel Only

March 17, 2020

How does the food chain not get interrupted at some point? Are food workers, people toiling in farms, canning vegetables, preparing meat, considered essential? And the people who get the food, the rice and the bread and the produce, to market, via trucks and boats and planes, are they considered essential? And the people who sell the food, the cashiers, are they essential? Are all of these people just as susceptible to the virus? 

At some point.

Community spread.

What constitutes a community?

A farm?

A meat packing plant?

The trucking industry?

To the kids out playing football the other day, the Governor of Rhode Island said, “Shut it down.” Restaurants and bars: delivery and take-out only. No gatherings of ten or more. 

Shut it down.

Can we shut it down?

Can we isolate and quarantine without food? Can we not go to work though the bills still come in the mail: the electric, the heat, the mortgage, the student loan, the car, the home, life, and auto insurance?

For how long?

If they stop billing, how do they then pay their bills? Everyone’s got bills right? Because everyone buys stuff that people have made, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they had bills.

Bills: to be paid.
Bills: to pay with.

For how long?

At some point.

Essential personnel only.

You there, are you essential?

I hope so.