If You Eat Food (Or Own a Tiger) You Should Probably Read This . . .

If you still go to the grocery store (or eat food) then you need to listen to the new episode of Reveal. It's called "Essential Workers" and it's mainly about the duress farmworkers and grocery store employees are suffering during this pandemic.

Farmworkers-- undocumented and on temporary visas-- are living in tight quarters, without much information. Most of them don't have benefits, and while they have been deemed "essential" they are not being treated as such. They don't have paid sick leave and the stimulus bill largely ignores the actual workers-- the people we really depend on. It's a scary mess that could have grave repercussions for all of us.

Grocery stores are pretty much a Petri dish for Covid-19. Many stores haven't enacted safeguards to insure social distancing. Some stores have paid compensation for employees that test positive for Covid-19, but tests are in short supply so lots of sick employees are working until they collapse. My takeaway from listening to this section of the podcast is this: if you go to the grocery store, you will (or have) come in contact with the virus.

Our federal government needs to show some national leadership. In addition to healthcare workers, the people who produce, deliver, and sell our food need to be given as much support and aid as possible during this pandemic.

In other Covid news, fans of the salacious, species-specific Netflix series Tiger King, will be sad to hear that tigers can contract Covid-19. So can lions. Several big cats at the Bronx Zoo tested positive for the virus. One of the tigers had a "dry cough." So it's probably inevitable that all those tigers kept in close quarters on the show are going to get it.

In general, it seems that cats can contract the virus, but dogs not so much.