COVID-19 has spread around the world and caused a lot of death. However, some people have been trying to cover up the deaths. According to a recent story released from ProPublica, a NIKE warehouse in Memphis expelled government officials illegally who were attempting to investigate a COVID-19 related death at the warehouse.
A Nike warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee, refused to allow a public health worker into the facility after a temporary worker at the facility died from COVID-19, ProPublica reported Saturday.
According to the report, an environmentalist from Shelby County Tennessee was denied entry by a third-party security guard at a Nike warehouse in Memphis on April 16, according to the report. The official was told she was not able to enter the facility without an appointment.
Five days prior to her April 16 visit, Nike learned that a temporary worker employed by Adecco at a facility on Shelby Drive had died from COVID-19. The environmentalist’s visit to the facility was sparked by a complaint that Nike was not cleaning properly or allowing workers to practice social distancing, according to the report. The environmentalist was told she could not enter the facility without an appointment.
According to ProPublica, the environmentalist received a call the following day from a Nike employee who said the company had installed markers at the facility to enforce social distancing and that the facility was closed each Tuesday for cleaning.
No one from the Shelby County office visited the warehouse again to verify that the changes had been made, and the environmentalist who had been denied entry on April 16 “felt at that time there was nothing else that needed to be done,” Kasia Alexander, environmental health administrator for the department, told ProPublica.
Bruce Randolph, the Shelby County health director told the outlet that the agency has the authority to use local police to gain access to a facility, though it did not do so. From March 26 to May 12, the agency received 201 complaints among various businesses in the county. The Nike facility was the only facility that had turned a county inspector away, according to the report.
“We don’t just automatically get law enforcement involved simply because the first time we show up, some security and management person refuses to allow us access,” he said.
A Nike spokesperson told the outlet the company had expanded social distancing in doorways, breakrooms, on the warehouse floor, and other areas from 3 feet to 6 feet at the beginning of April. The company said it uses plexiglass to separate workstations and placed markings on tables to tell workers where to sit to maintain an appropriate distance. It is also checking the temperatures of workers and visitors, according to the report. (source)
People say that COVID-19 is not a threat, but this is anything but true. The illness has killed about 100,000 people in the US thus far, and those numbers will likely increase.
Corporate America has a very long and notorious history of placing profits before humanity. That is the real reason why there is such an insistence on “re-opening”, because it is all about profits.
The continued dehumanization of the working man in light of even a pandemic is the other major scandal in addition to the death rates. If our society cannot respect our fellow man, and even the authorities who while they do make errors at times, also exist to protect people (getting rid of government, contrary to what so many in particularly “right” leaning circles say, will not make the country safer or more just, but rather open the way to horrible abuses as what happened in the 19th century) and have certain rights and responsibilities in society just as citizens do.
No corporate “statement” can cover for this.
If this virus continues, while it is likely that Trump is going to be re-elected, it does not bode well for his presidency and especially his “image” in history, which while so carefully constructed, will continue to crash harder than it already has, like a house of cards before a strong wind.