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Visiting Verso maintenance workers present a virus risk

Verso Corp. bringing workers into a community of less than 8,000 seems to be on about the same level as New York making nursing homes take in COVID-19 patients–it will be a slaughter. Iron Mountain is home to a regional VA medical center, the next closest one being in Milwaukee more than 200 miles away. That puts us in the middle of, basically, hundreds of square miles with the equivalent population of a nursing home. We have a disproportionate ratio of veterans who need to be close to the medical center, and retirees. We live in a remote location with many jobs related to the hospitals and those who work there, get care there, their families or cater to the needs of all those people, as well as the tourists and vacationers who visit us. To protect our community from this virus, the governor’s lock-down orders have been extended to May 28. We are not allowed to go anywhere unnecessary, or do or buy a laundry list of things, but how are the contractors being locked down? Will they be quarantined to their hotels rooms, only able to go from there to work? Or will they be out and about in our community, having to fend for themselves as far as housing and food and entertainment, without oversight when not actually at the mill working? What controls will be in place besides checking their temperatures upon entering the mill — a useless gesture, as they can be spreading COVID-19 long before their temperature spikes. My suggestion would be to “lock down” the imported contractors, allowing them only to go to the mill or their hotel rooms, without large gatherings. We are all having to comply by these rules, so it’s not like anyone is asking of them anything the rest of us have not been required to do. Have meals catered at their respective hotels, a different local restaurant providing food each day. Hotels provide breakfast, workers can get their lunch at the mill. It could be a boon for our hurting local restaurants as well as a way to protect our community with a quarantine of the workers. Everyone I know coming from out of the area after wintering somewhere else has religiously self-quarantined for two weeks upon their return. It’s not too much to ask these visitors to our community, with such an at-risk population, to do the same.

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