An essential worker’s lament

Let’s create the safest environment we can – for both essential workers and the public – by mandating that everyone wear masks in stores, buses, etc. (AT&T, Costco and airlines are doing it).

The governor mandated that grocery stores require employees to wear face coverings, but that doesn’t protect the employees from the public; it just protects the public from the employees (and the employees from one another). Face masks/covers don’t protect the wearers, only people around them.

We essential workers are being adamantly and strongly discouraged from wearing masks of higher quality, like surgical and N95 masks, while at the same time we are not being protected from the public coming into the stores not wearing masks.

The governor advises us non-medical workers not to fully protect ourselves, while he also does not offer us protection. In doing this, he is saying to essential workers: Don’t wear protective masks. And you must wear face covering to protect others, meanwhile, I am not putting in place a requirement that the public wear face coverings to protect you, the essential workers.

Oh, and thank you for risking your lives to keep working, by the way. Much appreciated.

Thanking essential workers is not enough – please show respect for essential workers by protecting us!

I see a parallel between smoking and not wearing masks. People have a right to smoke, but not in a store because of the health of others. Likewise, people have a right not to wear a mask, but not when it risks the health of others.

I am an essential worker. I shop for and deliver groceries and medications to seniors and disabled. The grocery stores/pharmacies are my place of work. In not requiring everyone who enters the store to wear a mask, the grocery stores are risking the health of everyone in the store, their own employees, customers and me, since the store is where I have to go to do my job.

So, let’s let some other state be the “control group” that doesn’t require everyone wear masks and let Vermont be the place we protect essential employees and the public in every way we can.

Let all Vermonters protect each other. In addition to “no shirt, no shoes, no service,” please include “no masks, no service.”

Odale Cress

Shelburne