If one avoids a “former” Covid-19 patient, would that be discrimination ?
If you are from Asia and living in Europe or America, it’s impossible not to meet any racial discrimination in your life. Sometimes they don’t even think they are discriminating. Any discrimination mustn’t be allowed, but we must be prepared against it anytime.
On 13th August, two patients in China who recovered from Covid-19 a while ago tested positive again. One of them is a 68 years old woman from Hubei. She tested positive on Sunday, 6 months after she recovered. The other patient tested positive on Monday. He returned from abroad to Shanghai. He was supposed to have recovered in April. Reportedly this man shows no symptom, so the 68 years old woman might be showing some symptom.
Johns Hopkins University commented on Bloomberg TV that there are two possibilities that these patients got re-infected, or actually did not recover because of the poor accuracy of PCR test. I’d like to add the third possibility that these patients got Covid-19 reactivated.
Actually it has been observed that the “recovered” patients tested positive after a while since the early stage of the pandemic. It was seen in South Korea and even in Japan. Whichever the answer is for 3 possibilities above, this should be a serious concern now. If these patients were re-infected, it means the total mortality rate will be accumulated and it can be around 30% by autumn of 2021(“5% mortality rate and being re-infectious mean 30% total mortality rate by Autumn in 2021”). If not, we will encounter a social problem because a “recovered” patient can get the virus reactivated anytime, or he/she might be actually positive. It’s like an invisible threat to people who haven’t been infected.
If someone was infected by Covid-19, and became “better” or tested negative for a couple of PCR tests, and went back to the normal life. Should this person work at a restaurant, at a packed office, at a reception again ? If this person represents the fact that he/she was infected by Covid-19 before, and the employer admits to come back to work and clients also admit it, it may not be a problem. However, if the person doesn’t represent it, will it be punishable ? Or the employer can have the right to reject having the person back ? Or clients can express a concern ? Eventually this could lead to discrimination. Now we need to look into the border between a discrimination and medical procedure. After all ironically, anti-masker might be the last resort to Covid-19 survivors.
1. A Covid-19 survivor gets a new job by hiding the medical history but nothing happens.
This should be the starting point. If the survivor doesn’t get the virus reactivated or is seriously recovered, no one would notice this person did not report the fact that he/she went through Covid-19. No one would have a problem then.
2. A Covid-19 survivor gets a new job by hiding the medical history and (maybe) infected other employees / clients.
This would be a serious case but probably in most of the countries, the employer would be legally accused of not clearing the medical history before the employment contract. The employer might be obliged to the compensation for the infected employees or clients.
3. A covid-19 survivor is rejected coming back to work due to the medical history.
If a case like #2 above happens and is socially recognized, most employers would want to reject letting an employee back or employing as new staff. They might want to employ for a lower salary. In this case, probably for how much of possibility a Covid-19 survivor becomes re-infectious (*) would be a key factor to make a decision. Then if an employer declines employment, would that be discrimination ?
4. A covid-19 survivor is let back to work despite the medical history, and infects other employees or clients.
Socially speaking, this would be the worst scenario because whatever the possibility (*) is, employers are likely to reject survivors for the following legal risk after this happens. However as a matter of fact, virus has no name tag so it might be difficult to identify who infected the employees or the clients if social tracing isn’t accurate enough.
I personally have several Covid-19 survivors around me. So far, I haven’t physically met them but honestly I haven’t decided to ever meet them. If not, am I discriminatory ? If your kid’s teacher survived Covid-19, after the celebration of recovery, would you send your kid back to the class with no single portion of fear ? At this moment, Covid-19 survivors are still absolute minority so no one has to recognize this potential problem, but if the number grows bigger, it can cause a social disruption.
