Coronavirus Update 3-11-2021: Happy 1st Birthday COVID-19 Pandemic

It's been exactly one year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Tomorrow will mark the one-year anniversary of when I started working from home. (It will also mark another significant milestone, but more on that on Monday.) Wednesday is one year from the date I temporarily rebranded the Ohio Employer Law Blog as the Coronavirus Law Blog. I look forward to ending that branding soon.

Coronavirus Update 3-10-2021: John Oliver on unemployment

One of the lasting lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic is that our state unemployment systems are old and broken, and desperately need to be modernized and fixed. While the $1.9 trillion Covid relief package that President Biden is expected to imminently sign provides for a $300 federal unemployment bonus for a few months, that is the tiniest of bandaids on this very large problem. 

Thankfully, we have John Oliver to offer his commentary on this important issue.

Coronavirus Update 3-9-2021: CDC says fully vaccinated people can safely visit fully vaccinated Grandma (but still have to keep wearing masks at work)

Yesterday, the CDC issued its long-awaited guidance on how fully vaccinated people can safely visit others.

Here's who and how the CDC says can fully vaccinated people can safely visit:

• Other fully vaccinated people indoors without wearing masks or staying 6 feet apart; and
• Unvaccinated people from one other household indoors without wearing masks or staying 6 feet apart if everyone in the other household is at low risk for severe disease.

Coronavirus Update 3-8-2021: Local judge in hot water over “China Virus” comments

Rule number one of this blog has always been, "Don't criticize judges whom you might appear in front of." Rules, however, are made to be broken, and some issues are just too important to ignore.

Judge John O’Donnell of the Lake County Court of Common Pleas is in hot water over comments he made in this month's edition of his county bar association's newsletter. In an article he wrote about managing his courtroom during the pandemic, he called COVID-19 the "China Virus" three separate times.

This is simply not acceptable. I'm appalled, and you should be, too.

Coronavirus Update 3-4-2021: Please pay your employees for time off related to the Covid vaccine

Earlier this week, the House passed an extension of the FFCRA as part of its $1.9 trillion Covid stimulus bill. (I'll cover its details in a future post, but if you're curious now, head over to Jeff Nowak's FMLA Insights.) 

One of the new measures in this proposed extension is the inclusion of leave taken by an employee to obtain a COVID-19 vaccine or recover from any injury, disability, illness, or condition related to the vaccine.

Coronavirus Update 3-3-2021: As states lift mask mandates, remember that the law is always a floor and not a ceiling

I just announced Texas is OPEN 100%.

EVERYTHING.

I also ended the statewide mask mandate.

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) March 2, 2021

With that announcement, Texas joins Mississippi (whose governor made the same announcement yesterday) and many of the other usual suspects with no rules mandating that people wear masks or other facial covering in public or at work.

I say, "BOOOOOOO!!!!" This is the worst idea at the worst possible time. Yes, cases are falling and vaccination rates are rising. But the prevalence of the more contagious Covid variants is also rising, and we are still months or longer away from herd immunity. Now is the time to double-down on safety, not shirk our responsibility to ourselves, our families, friends, coworkers, and others. As my friend Suzanne Lucas eloquently stated in discussing this same issue, "Moral obligations don't go away."

The 5th nominee for the “Worst Employer of 2021” is … the safety ignorer

Nine days before Christmas, one of my neighbors posted the following on my community's Facebook page.

Any prayer warriors on here, please keep the roofer who just fell off one of the townhouses in your prayers. It doesn't look like he's moving. So so sad 😢.

Courtesy of OSHA, we now know exactly what happened. In addition to being completely tragic, it was also 100 percent avoidable. A local roofing company sent a 14-year-old boy up on a three-story roof with absolutely no fall protection equipment and then tried to cover it up after he fell.