This Noe Valley Whole Foods location just had a staff member test positive. Were they asymptomatic or did they ever come in sick? Were they encouraged to take sick leave?

Don’t just push your government for top down action. Push for bottom up action.

The best government in the world can make it easy to do the right thing, but unless businesses and individuals are also encouraged to do the right thing we will not win against this disease. San Francisco has really started to make testing readily available, but the testing capacity isn’t being fully utilized. Do your part to nudge your community in the right direction. By doing the following.

Contact local businesses you frequent and ask the following questions.

Do not feel sheepish about asking these questions. It is for your health, it is for the health of everyone who shops there, and it is really for the health of the employees. You can call or email. If you do not get an email reply, please pick up the phone. I asked the questions below of the two places we shop most frequently in San Francisco, BiRite and Rainbow Grocery and got positive answers. However, I didn’t think to start asking around to the places we go less frequently… and then I saw this article Mission Local- Noe Valley Whole Foods employee tests positive for COVID-19. I wish I had persisted in my questioning.

Question 1. Do you encourage your employees to take sick leave?

I am continually struck while reading case study reports, that many super spreading events occurred even when the the person spreading COVID-19 (or “index patient”) was feeling sick. Due to the fact that COVID-19 has so many weird, varied, symptoms, transmission of COVID-19 would decrease if people were encouraged to self-isolate when feeling sick in any way.

Simply asking whether the business in question offers sick leave, is not enough: the employees need to feel like they can take sick leave easily and without penalty.

Question 2. If someone needs to quarantine, will they be supported?

An employee might be out for up to two weeks, possibly more if they have a bad or lingering case of COVID-19. Will they be supported during this time? Are they able to effectively quarantine away from roommates and/or family to prevent the spread of COVID-19 within a household? When I asked this question of my local market, BiRite, I found that they know that they can work with the city to either get the sick person a separate room in a hotel, or if more suitable, get the person who is healthy in the household a hotel room.

Question 3. Are all employees, even asymptomatic / healthy employees encouraged to get tested?

San Francisco is offering tests to all essential workers whether they have symptoms or not. I would really like to know whether all employees had been tested, but both BiRite and Rainbow grocery danced around this question. It seems as if legally a business cannot require its employees to be tested, so they were reticent to discuss the overall testing status of their employees. (If anyone can describe the legal reasoning behind this please let me know.) With that being the case, it seems that the best a business can do is actively encourage its employees to get tested.

Help keep us safe by using these questions to push the COVID-19 response from the bottom up.

If you get good positive answers to these questions, continue to frequent these businesses and spread the word. Asking these questions encourages businesses to do the right thing, and encourages them to encourage their employees to do the right thing.

We cannot expect our community’s COVID response to come only from the top down. San Francisco has done a decent job of building up its testing capacity, but much of that capacity is sitting unused. We need to prove that there is value in providing even more testing capacity. Pushing from the bottom, by encouraging businesses to make use of this testing capacity helps to keep us and our community safe.

Action: Contact the Businesses You Frequent.