A Follow-Up on Yesterday's Post

Yesterday, we linked to and summarized some of the findings of a New Yorker article by Eyal Press, highlighting Eugene Scalia's Labor Department's laissez faire approach to regulation of health and safety violations during the COVID pandemic.

Today, we noticed this related article from the Huffington Post  by Sanjana Karanth(h/t Ben Davis).  The article reports on a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of a worker at a Tyson plant in Iowa who died from COVID, allegedly after exposure at work.  The plaintiff was one of five workers from the same factory who died from COVID; about 1000 employees -- over a third of the workforce -- were infected.  The complaint alleges that managers at the plant set up a betting pool in which managers would try to guess how many workers would become infected.  The complaint also alleges that the plant manager called COVID "a glorified flu" and instructed workers to show up, even if they had symptoms.  

And now the link to yesterday's post:  here is the closing paragraph of the article:

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance at the beginning of the pandemic recommending that meatpacking companies put up physical barriers, enforce social distancing and install more hand-sanitizing stations, among other steps. But the guidance is not mandatory and is mostly unenforceable.