[fugalfervor]

Assuming an even distribution of COVID deaths throughout the 50 states, 20,000 workers per state have died in the last two years. I wonder if that has anything to do with the hiring difficulties fast-food restaurants are facing. The number of deaths is probably also higher among those who would be fast-food workers, since the likelihood of death from COVID was correlated with poverty.

[jimmaswell]

How many 80 year olds were working in fast food in 2019?

[heavyset_go]

Before the pandemic, there were a lot of retirement-aged people working in food service, like an uncomfortable amount. I certainly haven't been out to eat as much as I have before COVID, but what I noticed was a suspicious lack of those older workers I've come to expect working in food service. A lot of restaurants and fast food places are running on skeleton crews, now, some of them with one or two 16 year olds running the whole businesses alone even during dinner rushes.

[fugalfervor]

This kind of response is why I asked the question, I guess. I don't know the answer!

[irrational]

Most of the people who I knew that died from Covid were not old people. I literally did not know of any old people that died from it. Even my 99 year old grandmother got it and beat it (this was pre-vaccine). She said that she beat the Spanish flu in the 1920s so she would beat Covid in the 2020s, and she did.