What kind of person calls a newspaper office early Saturday morning? More to the point, who picks up the phone? The answer to the second question is me. The answer to the first question is I don’t really know. The Voice gave me a name, but I doubt it was real.
The issue at hand was dental care, an industry in which the Voice is employed. The Voice worried it could lose its job if quoted by name. When talking about COVID-19, the Voice noted, no one talks about the safety of frontline dental workers, the people who scrape the plaque off your teeth that wouldn’t be there had you flossed as you were supposed to. The people who take dental x-rays by inserting those excruciating hard plastic wedges in your mouth that cut sharply into the underbelly of your tongue.
Out of 1,000 occupational categories, frontline dental workers, the Voice noted, face the highest, most immediate risk of COVID exposure. That “front line” includes dentists, dental assistants, and dental technicians. All three occupations put themselves at risk, the Voice stated, but not all three share equally in the potential rewards. The real problem, the Voice cautioned, is not just the inequity of the relative risk-reward ratios, but that most dental offices are simply not adequately equipped to treat patients safely.