Low Income ‘Essential Workers’ Had Higher COVID Death Rates Than Anyone Else

According to an analysis of COVID death data, lower income workers were far more likely to die from COVID during the first year of the pandemic than any other group. This isn't surprising, as these workers were deemed "essential" and were put into situations where they either couldn't properly distance from others or they were exposed to far too many people. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this new data.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Do you remember the early days of the pandemic? When we were telling the people who had to go and staff grocery stores, or go work and meet packing plants, that they were essential workers, you're vital cogs in our economic machine. And we can't do this without you. So y'all have to come to work, even though we're in the beginning stages of a deadly pandemic. Well, new studies have been done and shows that the first year of the pandemic, 68% of the people who died from COVID in year one, you know, when we did actually have, you know, things shut down, everybody had to stay home mass, social distancing, and the like 68% of the deaths were low income service and retail workers, 68% of the deaths, low income service and retail. And of course, factory workers that is mind blowing. But at the same time that it's mind blowing.

It's also not surprising, right? These are the people. Again, we're talking people working in retail. We're talking about people working in grocery stores, people in meat, packing plants, which I think industry by industry had the highest death rate of COVID. And of course there were all people who will lower down, according to this report on the socioeconomic ladder, they were low income people, but we promise them you're essential. We can't do this without you. You are the engine driving our economy and they are, but we just let 'em die because we as a country, corporations didn't care because, oh no, we lost one checkout clerk. Well, Hey, don't worry. We can find another 15 year old to staff. That position we'll be okay. Oh no, we just lost half of our meat packing plant. Ah, don't worry. We'll post some new job openings, maybe up the pay by a buck or two an hour.

We'll bring in new people. You are expendable labor for these corporations and to a degree to the federal government as well. Yes. You're the essential cogs in the machine. We can't do it without you, but we're sure not gonna give you any protections. And this study proves it. And of course, simple things could have made this a lot easier paid sick leave. Cuz some of the problem was that you had people that couldn't afford to take time off work, you know? Sure. Maybe they had a mild version of COVID like, ah, I'm not feeling too great, but I'm good enough to go to work because I can't lose that money. If I knew I could take the day off and get paid, I wouldn't go in. That's not the employee's fault, by the way. That's the corporation's fault. Then of course you had poor ventilation in these areas where they were working, allowing the virus to spread. They didn't have protections for these workers. They couldn't always socially ed. They were around lots of people, whatever it is, low income people suffered the most.

And that of course is why in year two. And now of course in year three, they're like, ah, screw it. Everybody get back to work. Nothing matters because they don't care about you. If you live or die, it doesn't matter to them. Right? The folks at the top, they've got what they need. They're gonna be just fine. But for the rest of you, you're expendable workers. And if you drop dead on the job, don't worry. They're gonna find somebody really quick to replace you.