6 ms·

I'm not sure about strawberries but aren't farmworkers in general essential workers? Our food supply and delivery chain is what allows others to stay at home.

• BrentOzar 7y ago
  > I'm not sure about strawberries but aren't farmworkers in general essential workers? Yes, but that doesn't mean they're immune from the coronavirus risk. The whole point is that they face the coronavirus risk because they're continuing to work.
  • ng12 7y ago
    But some people are going to have to be exposed. Farmworker's exposure helps us flatten the curve.
    • Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
      Sure. Except if reports are to be believed coronavirus carrying foods could survive the trip from farm to table and infect people nationwide rapidly.
      • ng12 7y ago
        If so that'll happen no matter what. Packaged food will be handled by multiple people before it gets into the consumer's hands.
        • Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
          Force farms to implement social distancing. Just use a drone. Immediate shut down for noncompliance. Owner goes to jail, farm and equipment get seized nationalized and sold back to the public. Illegals get deported, legals get unemployment. It takes everyone making sacrifices to stop the spread. Especially the landowners and leaders.
    • groby_b 7y ago
      That... I'm sorry, but that's just an utterly uninformed take. Nobody "has" to be exposed, protective gear would work just fine. And no, exposing farmworkers doesn't help to flatten the curve. The curve would be equally flat if they weren't exposed. What you just said is "Somebody has to die, let's kill the farmworkers so we're safe". You might want to rethink. What we need to do is stop exploiting them. They're not at high risk because they need to be, they're at high risk because we're not paying them well. Because we withhold even the options for basic hygiene for them. Because we value profit over human life.
      • ng12 7y ago
        I'm not saying we shouldn't take all precautions we can. I'm saying it's necessary work and some exposure needs to happen.
        • groby_b 7y ago
          No, some exposure does not need to happen. You could bring in the harvest just fine without exposure. We're choosing not to, because it'd cost precious money, and that's the god we'd like to worship. With the exact same kind of logic you use, one could also argue that it's not necessary work. Some starving just needs to happen. No? Not good logic? Then explain to me why your life matters more than farm worker lives?
          • ng12 7y ago
            Zero exposure for someone working on a farm is utterly unrealistic.
            • chipotle_coyote 7y ago
              Zero exposure is probably unrealistic for everyone, but it's not unrealistic to give farm workers disposable masks, gloves, hand sanitizers, and washing stations, put effort into keeping them six feet apart as they work, and provide sufficient paid leave so they don't feel pressure to keep working even if they believe they're sick. I think that's really what we're talking about here.
  • PeterisP 7y ago
    The lockdown still reduces the risk to essential workers in three ways: 1) Much of our normal daily contacts is outside of work, that part of a lockdown affects everyone; 2) The essential workers encounter less people because others are out of the streets; 3) If the general spread is lower and slower, then there's less chance for everyone, including the essential workers to get infected. It's just as with vaccination - if we get a sufficient number of people vaccinated, then everyone is protected because the disease doesn't spread; and if everyone non-essential is on a sufficiently strict lockdown (instead of classifying anything remotely related as essential) then everyone including the essential workers is protected as the disease dies down instead of infecting everyone who's susceptible.
• deleted 7y ago
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• bluGill 7y ago
  yes they are, which is why farms have been declared essential, along with their supply chain.