“Where the Next Meal Is Coming From”: Policy Mix to Support Restaurant Workers in the U.S. During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction

For a disease-causing virus to have pandemic potential for humanity, it has to cause disease and death in people, and it has to be spread so quickly and easily and in silent (asymptomatic) ways that it can stealthily move in a population, even when the population is somewhat aware of its presence. If it has too fast of a death rate, people will succumb before they can pass it on to others. If the death rate is “too high,” people may go to ground en masse, and the transmission may end. But what about a virus that affects different parts of a population very differently, so much so that people can deny that the virus causes a fatal disease that can stop a person’s heart within days or weeks…even when treated with the best of modern science? In many ways, SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) which can develop into COVID-19 (corona virus disease 2019) fits the bill based on empirical health outcomes data. The world at this moment is in its grip. The numbers are devastating.

In mid-December 2020, about a year from when humanity became aware of this pathogen, there are currently 75,148,314 active coronavirus cases and 52,715,399 recovered. There have been 1,665,481 deaths worldwide, and in the U.S., on Dec. 17, 2020, 316,906 deaths [and projections of half a million dead by the end of February 2021 (IHME COVID-19 Forecasting Team, Oct. 23, 2020)] by a team that has proved its predictive mettle at virtually every phase of this pandemic. At this time, humanity finally has some therapeutics that may be somewhat effectual, and they have some novel mRNA vaccines coming online with high efficacy (94 – 95%) against infection and some protectiveness against serious COVID-19 even if infected. Diagnostics has become more available but was never sufficient to use for actual contact tracing and suppression of viral spread; rather, American communities had to make do without actual sufficient awareness of viral hotspots. Many carried the infection asymptomatically and spread the infection to others. For the past many months, however, humanity did not have a truly credible defense except social distancing, face-masking (against the passing of bio-aerosols), hand hygiene, and some other protective measures reminiscent of those practiced in the 1918 influenza (Spanish flu) pandemic that resulted in some 50 million deaths around the world (Scerri & Grech, Nov. 12, 2020) with hope that present-day collaborations could lower the numbers of deaths (Webel, & Freeman, June 5, 2020). At this moment, the U.S. is in its third wave; others suggest that the U.S. never really left the first wave and has never been able to bring down the base load of infection in society. Coming into the Fall 2020 and Winter 2021, there are fears that people returning indoors given the colder weather will mean a large jump in infections, and the numbers seem to be bearing that out. Family gatherings around the winter holidays—Thanksgiving; Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa; the New Year’s celebration, and such—are also expected to seed more outbreaks.

Researchers have been teasing out various evolving social patterns of viral spread in different locales, based on available data. One study found that “younger persons, having first acquired their infections through increasing social contact with their peers, then transmitted their infections to older, less socially mobile individuals. Without such cross-infection, an isolated epidemic among older people in Florida would be unsustainable” (Harris, 2020, p. 1019). This particular study used available mobility data and restaurant reservation data, among others.