Originally posted by timb64 In the UK I don't recall seeing any news reports about specific problems for workers at meat processing plants.
Thank you for your report. Maybe meat is processed differently in other parts of the world. In the UK you certainly, at least in London, have had COVID-19 issues, even at 10 Downing St.
In Iowa we have always processed meat efficiently. But since the 1980s these large companies have done more to decrease wages and increase line speeds, and the cost on the human body has been high, but now in a pandemic, even higher.
A pork producer who sold his farm told me a week ago he raised pigs. He didn't kill pigs. He once toured a pork processing plant and told me he anticipated they would have problems with COVID-19. He previously told me he thought our county would be spared, because it is rural, and it has been. He just could not imagine killing the pigs he raised. An interesting juxtaposition as he sold thousands to processing plants. I like bacon, and pork. Maybe I would think differently if I toured a killing floor.
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Originally posted by GUB Here in NZ the meat processing industry was seen as essential so kept going but they kept the workers at 2 metres spacing and accordingly processing dropped to 30% of optimum. But the covid challenge was never out there anyway. I think a more pertinent question is did the US have trouble with any other close quarter essential industries?
Yes . . . health care workers, and grocery stores workers to a limited degree.
This is Dr. Larry Brilliant in 2006 a few years before the pandemic, and the most relevant production I have seen to predicting our current predicament.
Larry Brilliant: TED Prize wish: Help stop the next pandemic - YouTube Early testing and isolating those who test positive stops spread. Otherwise you are like the U.S.A. where we have over 82,000 deaths. We had no early detection / early response and isolate. We screwed up. Now we have limits to our ability to stop its spread to vulnerable populations.
I think my secretary may have had it mid-March before St. Patrick's Day. She had a respiratory illness and tested negative to strep; negative to influenza. She didn't qualify for a COVID-19 test, because she had no foreign travel, and no exposure to a known COVID-19 confirmed person (there were 21 in Iowa at that time), and wasn't hospitalized with a respiratory problem.
Lack of early testing is a big factor in why the U.S.A. is the leading country in COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.A., Also, NYC and Iowa closed schools the same day. NYC didn't want to close schools because of the impact that would have on working people whose children had no other child care. Another big mistake. Perhaps there is another country that doesn't accurately report #s, and if they did well maybe the U.S.A. would be 2nd.
Mine is a one horse office - me and her. She came in here one day to try to work with a deep cough, saying she couldn't afford to not work. But I offer benefits. She forgot. I let her stay an hour or so to clear the dictation and wiped everything down with rubbing alcohol when she left. She called later and said you were right - she was really sick - and symptoms changed from day-to-day. She was out a full week and toward the end - migraine headaches. It is a tough disease. You don't want it.