For as little as 60 Cents Per Month Per Worker, Shouldn’t Your Employer Protect Your Spouse, Kids, and Grandkids from another significant risk?
To their credit, your employer, through the support of your company’s CEO, COO, and Board Chairman/Chairwomen (and the support of your federal and state governments, which require specific workspace and job-related physical and process protections), protect you to an extensive extent. They do this through budget inclusion of the costs for certain well-known, historic worker protections.
For example, most US companies pay for each worker up to $20 per month for fire safety programs and insurance, $300 per month for workers’ compensation insurance for job-related injuries, and $2,200 per month for family health insurance—all to directly or indirectly protect not just you, but your spouse, children, and grandchildren from the financial, emotional, and societal consequences of your being killed or maimed at work.
These tools, while highly significant and much appreciated (although they are induced to an extent by government and social norms, so they are not entirely gratuitous), do not directly protect your spouse, kids, and grandkids from being killed because of a disease transmitted to you at work, either by a “nature-made bio-outbreak” or a “terrorist-manufactured bioattack.”
Significant bio-outbreak and bioattack worker and family insurance policies have yet to be created and made commercially available. We are working hard to change this unfortunate situation. However, good bio-outbreak and bioattack protection programs and tools do exist—and amazingly, the latter cost as little as pennies per worker per month.
So, why do many employers fail to spend as little as 60 cents per month for bioattack protection of you, your spouse, your kids, and ultimately your grandkids when the latter can be directly killed, not just financially and emotionally damaged?
Health Protection Programs and Health Insurance. Family health insurance alone, at up to $2,200 per worker per month, costs up to 2,000 times as much as your and your family’s protection through the preparedness of the leaders of your company to respond quickly, insightfully, and effectively to prevent, mitigate, and or control the “spread” of deadly pathogens throughout your workspace or facility caused by a significant bio-outbreak or bioattack. It is the substantial “spread” of fatal pathogens that increases the number of worker and family member deaths at or from a company—from just a few—to hundreds or even thousands.
Workers’ Compensation Programs and Insurance. Workers’ compensation insurance, at up to $300 per worker per month, costs up to 300 times as much as significant bio-outbreak and bioattack spread protection programs and tools.
Fire Safety Preparedness Programs and Insurance. Fire safety preparedness programs and insurance, at up to $20 per worker per month, jointly cost up to 20 times as much as significant bio-outbreak and bioattack spread protection programs and tools.
Why don’t they take a few more pennies from their budget to protect workers and families from the ravages of bioattack risks?
There are many possible answers to this vital question, but we believe it is mainly because of three reasons:
Mental and Emotional Exhaustion. Although you would think it would be the opposite, some CEOs, COOs, and Board Chairman/Chairwomen are exhausted and have their “heads in the sand” from their harsh experiences with the COVID-19 attack. They were woefully unprepared to protect their workers and their families from harm, so you would think they would be very intensely prepared for the next bioattack. But they aren’t. They are again similarly unprepared. This is legally, morally, and socially reckless conduct. When the next bioattack occurs, these leaders will, at the very least, lose their jobs. At the most, they will be held personally and financially accountable. But that will not help you protect yourself and your family members.
Primarily because of its specific dangerous nature and nothing positive the employers did (most committed blunder after blunder), COVID-19 only cost them millions of dollars from lost revenue and did not kill thousands or even hundreds of their workers or their spouses, kids, and grandkids. If it had, tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue would have been lost, and the deaths would have led to not just a walk-out strike but a worker uprising. Employers should take notice and be wary of this happening with the next bio attack, whether it is nature-made or terrorist-manufactured.
Worker and Union Dereliction of Duty. Some workers and their union leaders have never loud enough and in powerful enough ways asked CEOs, COOs, and Board Chairman/Chairwomen, much less pressed them hard, to do so. Workers’ and their union leaders’ failure to do this is a “dereliction of duty” to themselves and the people each is responsible for protecting.
Greed. What is the third legally, morally, and socially reckless reason? Greed. Some CEOs, COOs, and Board Chairmen/Chairwomen are unprepared again because they are recklessly “betting” on three things:
(1) Foolhardy Assumption Number One. There will not be another significant bioattack while they remain in office, usually three to six years. This is a foolish understanding of the likeliness and the likely timing of the next bio-crisis, whether it is a nature-made bio-outbreak or terrorist-manufactured bioattack. Significant experts expect that there will, with a high degree of certainty, be a next nature-made bio-outbreak or terrorist-manufactured bioattack in our lifetimes and that it will possibly occur within the next six years if it is nature-made and within the next three years if it is terrorist-manufactured. What’s more, the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that the next global bio-outbreak or bioattack could be as much as five times as deadly as COVID-19, which, for a variety of reasons, killed 1.2 million Americans and 7 million people worldwide. If his prediction materializes, that will mean that almost 6 million Americans would die, and roughly 35 million people would die globally. This level of disaster could bring many countries to their knees for years if not decades.
(2) Foolhardy Assumption Number Two. If there is, it will not spread to their facilities at all or to any significant extent. Again, this is foolhardy and wishful thinking. Given today’s global trade patterns, in a “global pandemic outbreak,” almost every company is at considerable risk. In a “multi-country endemic outbreak,” there is a high risk that it might go global. Even if a “neighboring company” is only infected by a nature-made outbreak, there is a high risk that it will spread to your facility. Added to this, if your facilities or your neighbor's facilities, or their senior executives, are targeted by a terrorist bio-attack, of which, given the explosive state of the US and the world, there is no small risk, workers at your facilities will produce less revenue, and if they or their family members are killed or maimed, you can expect the consequences to be catastrophic for all, including workers and their families but also executives, shareholders, suppliers, customers, bankers, insurers, and the like.
(3) Foolhardy Assumption Number Three. If it does, once again, it will not be significantly deadly to otherwise healthy working-aged workers and their spouses or their healthy children or grandchildren. This, again, is foolhardy. No matter the scale or the source, workers and their loved ones are likely to be killed or maimed. Much of society in America and globally pretends that the death or maiming of workers’ parents and grandparents was no significant loss. But the next time, especially if large numbers of workers themselves, their coworkers, or their spouses, children, and grandchildren are added to the blend, almost undoubtedly, political, social, and legal norms for all will be flipped.
In other words, many employers are playing Russian Roulette at as low as 60 cents per worker with the lives of their employees and all their worker’s immediate loved ones.
Let’s join forces with well-intentioned, caring, and responsible CEOs, COOs, and Board Chairmen/Chairwomen, who are good people, to end the bio-protection budget neglect gap and ensure reasonable protections against the next bio-outbreak or bioattack are in place soon.
Whether nature-made bio-outbreaks or terrorist-manufactured bioattacks, these requirements will eventually be implemented through federal OSHA and state workers’ compensation worker safety programs and the like.
However, related voluntary corporate bio-outbreak and bioattack insurance products, as well as voluntary bio-outbreak and bioattack spread prevention, mitigation, and control risk-management programs and tools, can’t wait for the slow regulatory processes (even those of my beloved FDA, where I served as second-in-command and COO) to meet the needs.
The need for “preparedness” is now. We are pushing insurance companies to cover the need for voluntary corporate insurance products. We and a few other companies are covering the voluntary bio-outbreak and bioattack spread prevention, mitigation, and control risk-management programs and tools needed.
If you want to help, you can text my team and me at 617-680-3127.
Best,
John
Dr. John Norris
Executive Chairman
Safely2Prosperitry LLC
531 West Washington Street
Hanson, MA 02341
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