Pizza Deliverers Are Doubly Exposed to the Coronavirus

However messy the world gets, the only certainty is that we will still need couriers to deliver pizza. That was the vision of last year’s hit video-game “Death Stranding,” in which an armor-plated delivery man carries packages from bunker to bunker in post-apocalypse America. The current Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak is confirmation of sorts. As people stay cooped up at home in self-quarantine, whether by choice or by force, the occasional guilty pleasure of ordering food has become a lifeline.

On the surface, that might seem like good news for those increasingly in-demand couriers. Orders on food-delivery apps in Hong Kong and South Korea grew at double-digit rates in January and February. But the reality is that in an increasingly global public-health crisis, especially one that is already dealing damage to the economy, it’s the foot soldiers of 21st-century capitalism — Deliveroo riders, Uber drivers, TaskRabbit jobbers, “zero-hours” workers — who look doubly vulnerable.