The world has changed.  We are all at risk.  Unless, we stay home, never go out, and never let anyone in.  Of course, we’ll starve to death, maybe even go crazy, but that’s the only way we can be 100% safe.

Unfortunately, there’s no vaccine.  Just as unfortunate, there’s no cure.  And, as if that wasn’t a b…h, we don’t even have a reliable therapy to make sure if we contract COVID-19, it will not be life-threatening.

And, I’m sure y’all are just like my clients.

They want to stay open, they want to protect their staff- and they want to reassure their clients/customers that they can feel safe dealing with our firms.  How can we do that?

We can test our employees.

Hold on.  We need to do that in a different way than you might think.

If we were to test our employees every day, we’d be dropping hundreds if not thousands of dollars each and every week.  And, we’ve already taken a financial hit from the quarantine, from the 50% occupancy (or less)- how can we afford those ridiculous testing costs at the same time?

So, let’s consider three examples.

A restaurant.  A smallish office.  A hair/nail salon.

Let’s assume each of them have ten employees.  That would be $ 1000- perhaps a day, but certainly a week.   My clients can’t afford that.

But, what about $ 300 a week?  That’s doable.

It requires a few things.

The first is to ask our staff- at least for the foreseeable future- to NOT go to a bar, to keep their contacts to a minyan (a group of 10), to use masks and gloves when they go out.   In return, we promise them we’ll keep them employed.  (Yes, we hope we hired responsible folks.)

Then, we will test our staff twice a week.  But, not individually.

The Restaurant:

We will pool samples from a waiter, a member of the kitchen crew, and one from the cooking crew. In so doing- if God forbid, we get a positive result- we can keep the restaurant open.  Because we still have two more cooks, two folks to keep the dishes and plates clean- as well as the facilities, and wait staff to serve our guests.    And, we then retest those from the positive results separately.  To discern who was positive and then have that specific person quarantined.

The Office:

So, there are folks working on five projects.  Unfortunately, at least three of them are working on multiple projects.  We pool test those working on different projects.  Which does mean if we get a positive result, one of our projects can be at risk.  But, the others can proceed, until we get that second confirmation test results.

Hair/Nail Salon:

In this instance, we pool test one nail lady (sorry, they are virtually all women), one stylist, and one support staff.  With the same hope that no one tests positive.  But, if they do, we can still cut and style hair, perform our manicures and pedicures, and keep the place cleaned.

Just so you know, this works almost anywhere- from nursing homes to hotels to biotech firms.   And, this idea has been around since WWII when syphilis was a problem; it was tried again with HIV.   And, larger firms should consider pools of 5 to 10 folks, since they have great numbers to keep the rest of the firm going.  And, since testing is not mandated for businesses, we don’t need government approval for this scheme.

But, this concept fails in a hot-spot.  (Yeah- I haven’t been to Houston, Miami, or Phoenix in a while.) Because, there, the propensity for positive tests is too high for this to be of great utility.  For this testing concept to work (both physically and financially), we need an average positive rate of much less than 5% or less- preferably below 2%.

 

To my friends and clients in France- Bonne Fete Nationale!

Happy Bastille Day!