Government Leaders Need to Emphasize That, While Some of Us Stay at Home, Others of Us Need to Go to Work

As more and more shelter-at-home and shutdown orders are issued, the emphasis in the orders is how we need to stay at home, isolate ourselves, and dramatically reduce our contacts with other people to slow the spread of the coronavirus.  All of which is well and good.  But at the same time, the orders exclude grocery stores, drug stores, etc.  And we are assured that we don’t need to hoard because those stores will be open.

But what I have not seen are statements of how important it is for workers in those stores to go to work; i.e., while the rest of us protect ourselves by reducing contacts, we need them need to keep exposing themselves to all the contacts that their jobs require. 

I understand the logic for society as a whole to have some of us greatly reduce our contacts while others, in critical jobs, don’t.  It reduces the overall number of contacts that society has, and that is important.  But what I haven’t seen is enough explanation of this; i.e., an explanation as to why grocery store workers shouldn’t shelter at home and protect themselves like the rest of us are doing.

Maybe it’s being said, but the media is not reporting it.  Or maybe I’m not reading far enough down in the articles to see it.  But what we need, when political leaders ask people to stay home, is for them to also ask workers in essential industries to go to work.  To explain to workers in essential industries that they are being protected by the rest of us staying at home and that we need them to do their jobs.  And the request for these people to go to work needs to be emphasized as much, if not more, than the request, or order, for other people to stay at home.
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UPDATE (3/23/210 9:40 am): A lightly edited version of this post was printed as a letter to the editor in today's Chicago Tribune.  You can find it here (scroll down).