What's disturbing, though, is all the crap that's been installed everywhere. The plexiglass, signs and arrows on the floors, barriers, and other shit like that. What will happen to that? I kinda doubt anyone will be removing that anytime soon. They must have invested quite a bit of money into it, so nobody will be eager to throw it away. It will probably stay for now, 'just in case'. So will it always be there to remind us not to get used to 'normality' too much? Seems likely right now.
Was interested in the coordination - the mechanisms; engineering of how to move a society to accept, in their everyday interactions, these physical and psychological barriers. Everyday interactions take place in the world of business (incorporated, non-incorporated etc.). Incorporated within the five hours of Event 201 was the overall concept of the Orwellian harmonization on a global scale, buried were hints at specifics. So, how to move all that onto the business world, and once done, business of course is the ground floor of public interaction - need food, gas, health services, build a house et cetera et cetera. People work, and their safety must be ensured, and employers must ensure it. The interacting public, who many are also be workers, must abide.
Part of the mechanism for the above; and this is just one arm, is ACSS:
Australia, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland (ACSS) Consortium
Which is all about ‘Harmonization’ of products, systems and actions.
The
Australia, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland Consortium (ACSS) regulatory authorities have pledged our collective support in countering the COVID-19 global pandemic.
To address this
worldwide public health crisis, ACSS members are collaborating to advance the regulatory science needed to support the rapid development of diagnostic tests, as well as vaccines and treatments against COVID-19. Members are committed to sharing vital information as we all investigate and evaluate medical products for quality, safety and efficacy, and strive to ensure that the benefits of any new medical product outweigh its risks.
During these unprecedented times,
the Consortium is building on its
proven ability to benefit from work-sharing that has recently led to
the approval of numerous medicines. Consortium members remain committed to review and collaborate on possible COVID-19 investigational vaccines and treatment options,
with the goal of expediting their development. Through this work-sharing partnership, ACSS will
reduce regulatory duplication and increase
each agency's capacity to ensure that,
globally, there is access to high-quality, safe and effective solutions to address the COVID-19 emergency.
We remain committed to work together to find innovative solutions to counter COVID-19,
the largest, most severe and most complex international disease outbreak in a generation.
With no real need to review the last 11,550 posts that have laid out much of the breadth and depth since before and after the WHO's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, took to his megaphone to shout-out
Pandemic! wherein on March 11th, 2020, the harmonization gears started to move. Thus, the public had Health edicts placed on them from readymade legislation, or legislation quickly knitted together. The CDC, Health Canada et al. looked to the WHO as their frameworks where pulled off the shelf. Their global 'harmonized' initial response. As people can attest, there was a lot of confusion. So, what to do about the business end had helping arm's - legal and regulatory arm's that would help to cement, as you said MI "the plexiglass, signs and arrows on the floors, barriers, and other shit like that."
Each country (developed and some not) have their own Health and Occupational Health systems - here is the
ILO database from Albania to Zimbabwa. The U.S. has OSHA that controls workplaces of the incorporated kind and none incorporated kind. Canada, the EU (state/provincial levels), Norway, Australia, Asia et cetera have their own bodies to enact regulatory control on business for the safety of their workers. Nothing new, and certain Standards are important to ensure that, let's say, people are protected from a building inadvertently collapsing, unlike Building 7, or when someone might be crushed or exposed to asbestos or lead. So as said, controls derive in protecting workers safety and rights. With Covid, how was this to be harmonized? The WHO had its role, and another body that many might not be aware of, and that many countries (see link above) align with, which is the ILO - International Labour Organization. Here is their '
framework' according to the WHO, and here is the ILO's April 28th, 2020 publication '
In the face of a pandemic: Ensuring Safety and Health at Work':
ILO Conventions Since 1919, the International Labour Organization has approved and published nearly 190 Conventions, which are statements of legally binding international treaties related to various issues regarding work and workers. They cover a wide range of working conditions such as hours of work, the right of association for workers, child labour, employment discrimination, labour inspections, maternity leave, health and safety, workers’ compensation, medical examinations, minimum working age, holidays with pay, and contracts of employment for indigenous workers. Once ILO has passed them, Member States are asked to ratify them, which means they are making a formal commitment to implement them. Ratification is an expression of the political will to undertake comprehensive and coherent regulatory, enforcement and promotional action in the area covered by the Convention. Ratifying nations are then required to make regular reports to ILO providing evidence of their progress towards implementation of the Conventions.
By now, unless people are still not working, there is no need to work, or they are retired, each has received the occupational covid-memo from their employers: procedures, training - details of hierarchies of controls against the evil-covid that 'must' be followed. Employers seemed to have received these steps as filtered down from the WHO to the ILO, harmonized as a framework through each country, state and provincial level. Here is a sample from the ILO on the subject:
ILO issues guidance for safe, healthy, return to work during COVID-19
Press release | 22 May 2020
Return to work policies should be informed by a human-centred approach that puts rights and international labour standards
at the heart of economic, social and environmental strategies and ensures
that policy guidance is embedded in national occupational safety and health systems.
GENEVA (ILO News) – Two guidance documents for creating safe and effective return-to-work conditions during the
COVID-19 pandemic have been issued by the International Labour Organization (ILO).
The
Guidance Note says that return to work policies need to be informed by a human-centred approach that puts peoples’ rights at the heart of economic, social and environmental policies. Social dialogue –
bringing together governments, workers’ and employers’ organizations – will be critical in creating the effective policies and trust needed for a safe return to work.
The note draws on specialist ILO guidance documents and International Labour Standards, which provide a normative framework for creating a safe return to work. The document
stresses that policy guidance should be embedded into national Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) systems, as these create the basis for safe workplace environments. The guidance can therefore contribute to a culture of continuous, country-level improvement,
in administration, institutions, laws and regulations, labour inspections, information gathering, and other areas.
[...]
“Unsafe work practices anywhere are a threat to both health and sustainable business, everywhere. So, before returning to work, workers must be confident that they will not be exposed to undue risks,” said Deborah Greenfield, ILO's Deputy Director-General for Policy. “And, to help enterprises and economies get going as soon as possible,
workers will need to cooperate with these new measures. This means
that social dialogue will be particularly important because it is the most effective way to feed information and views into policies and actions, so creating the best chance for a swift and balanced recovery.”
The Guidance Note,
A safe and healthy return to work during the COVID-19 pandemic, is accompanied by a
10-point, Practical Guidance action checklist for employers, workers and their representatives. This tool is intended to compliment and not replace national occupational safety and health regulations and guidance, to help establish the practical details of a safe return to work.
When it comes to "national occupational safety and health regulations and guidance" each reading here, in whatever country they reside, if working, know what has come out. It is generally lock-step with each other from the
ILO's guidance.
To ensure these matters, each country has also had legal law firm's offer their opinions to employers, like
this one, and others similar that have been read from across the globe.
March 13 – Legal on workplace legislation.
Occupational Health and Safety legislation across the country generally imposes a duty on employers to take all reasonable and practicable measures to protect the health and safety of workers on a work site and other persons at or in the vicinity of the worksite.
From the ILO publication, one gets further quarterbacking by people
like this guy who is helping to prime covid-policy through professionals. Now 'this guy' at other times is addressing other safety issues and likely he offers good advice.
As for regulatory changes, OSHA has their way of
addressing these changes - calling them 'temporary measures,' and yet in the background their are others, as was suggested by the WHO (same
link from the WHO's framework above) who are looking at cementing regulatory changes directly related to their evil-covid concerns. Here on page 80 is a sample of mechanisms that are useful - fitting into regulatory architecture that most have in place:
Exposure Limits {EL's}
There are a number of standards setting organizations that make recommendations for exposure limits. These are the levels of exposure to a chemical or other type of agent to which a worker can be exposed without serious injury. The term ‘exposure limit’ is a general term that covers the various expressions employed in national lists, such as “maximum allowable concentration”, “threshold limit value” (TLVs), “biological exposure indices” (BEIs), “occupational exposure limits” (OELs), etc. These limits are determined for the average worker, and do not generally provide different recommended levels for those who may have differences in susceptibility due to sex or other factors such as age, etc. The ILO notes that “OSH research should capture any sex-based disparities; yet, at present, there is a dearth of information about the different risks for men and women of exposure to certain chemicals.”
From review, each country links to systems using Standards like
ISO, or from American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (
ACGIH) - often using Threshold Limit Values (TLV) to set EL (Exposure Limits). Coupled with other legislation (most of it is similar in nature from country to country), they are now easily in a position to implement the edicts of Health Ministries, CDC etc. upon business, who in turn 'must' educate their workers and implement controls on public interactions. And here we all are in whatever phase has been presently implemented in your area to manage the evil-covid.
Wearing masks in public will become mandated in my area in just over four hours from now.
Going back to the ISO Standards (EU and other), one can find their
covid-list to help in making decisions, and one might be interested to read their
medical face mask testing, which is a far cry from what we see on the streets that the public wear - and now mandated, as you have pointed out.
There is the drum roll taking place that gets the population (to remove 'plexiglass, signs and arrows on the floors, barriers') into Phase IV, better known as contact tracing and vaccinations. The former may also be implemented under occupational laws yet to be rolled out, not sure. The latter, too, is an easy mark for the WHO, CDC et cetera to then move along to the ILO and downstream to country, state occupational systems (I'm guessing this is a possibility).
Here is the WHO's
chapter and verse:
Accelerating a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine - Draft landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines
Next steps
Once a safe and effective vaccine becomes available, it will be vital that it is accessible to everyone who needs it. WHO will continue to work to align R&D,
fast-track regulatory approvals and manufacturing so that all populations in all countries can access a vaccine as early as possible.
The centre-piece of the world’s research response is a globally agreed scientific
R&D Roadmap for COVID-19, which details steps for current and future work.
And get a load of the manufactures list of who is '
working hard' to make it happen (what a list).
Commitments to share knowledge, intellectual property and data
The COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) will compile, in one place, pledges of commitment made under the
Solidarity Call to Action to voluntarily share COVID-19 health technology related knowledge, intellectual property and data. The Pool will draw on relevant data from existing mechanisms, such as the Medicines Patent Pool and the UN Technology Bank-hosted Technology Access Partnership. Shared knowledge, intellectual property and data
will leverage our collective efforts to advance scientific discovery, technology development and broad sharing of the benefits of scientific advancement and its applications based on the right to health. Holders of COVID-19 health technology related knowledge, intellectual property and/or data are invited to "
take action now".
And here they are selling their wears:
Live: Launch of the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool
That is a brief kick at the can, and it may have other mechanisms not discussed, such as monetary systems/incentives.
(the virus is selective, it won’t jump on credit cards). 