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U.S. Reels to a Meat Shortage and Prices Are Getting Weird

hpoe 6y ago
This is what concerns as many people have acted like the economy only effects rich people, or any move that trades the economy for lives is inherently immoral. Food falls under the economy, the economy isn't just the stock market or things rich people do rich people things in. The economy is the vast network stretching across the globe that works to supply goods and services in the places they are needed, when the economy starts shutting down so do a lot of things we need for daily life. All the government stimulus in the world isn't going to help anyone if there aren't goods to purchase.
- empath75 6y ago
  In fact, government stimulus will just cause hyperinflation as more money chases less goods and services.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Not clear. Demand has been pushed way down for things--- perhaps even more than production has been. Stimulus could improve the match of demand to production.
  - vkou 6y ago
    1. We would need to print quadrillions of dollars to get hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is a boogieman, unless this administration completely loses its mind. 2. Recessions cause the destruction of money (Due to defaults, and lack of new loans). This causes deflation. If the new money created by the printing press does not exceed these deflationary pressures, you won't even get inflation, let alone hyperinflation. 3. Deflation is horrible, and is much more dangerous than mild inflation. 4. The printed money is currently chasing investment assets (Mostly stocks), not flour and ground beef. Our previous experience with QE did not result in the prices of commodities inflating - only the prices of investments. Inflation is not the problem.
    - mlyle 6y ago
      Some stimulus measures are creating money to chase flour and ground beef-- the paycheck protection program, etc, are borrowing (and re-lending) in order to preserve pay to consumers. But I agree it's not most of it.
      - 0x8BADF00D 6y ago
        You won't see it until it's too late. Inflation is a backward looking measure. Expected inflation can be inferred by nominal interest rates. If you look at the corporate debt market those rates are already quite high. What happened in the oil market could easily happen in the gold market, but in reverse. Nobody wanted to take delivery on oil, but a lot of people are going to want to take delivery on gold, because there's a shortage of it. At what point does COMEX go bankrupt when nobody is honoring their word to deliver gold upon expiry? A high gold price would be very bad for dollars, because gold is an alternative reserve currency to dollars. Instead of buying a tbill, someone can just buy gold, hold it, and sell a small portion when they need to buy dollar denominated assets, mainly crude. And crude prices are at historic lows, so you don't need to buy as many dollars as you did before.
        nradov 6y ago
        What exactly is the mechanism by which Comex would go bankrupt? Commodity delivery contracts are still legally enforceable through the court system, although some civil cases may be delayed several months. Gold is a commodity, not a currency. I can't pay my tax bill in gold.
        0x8BADF00D 6y ago
        > Gold is a commodity, not a currency. I can't pay my tax bill in gold. It was actually a currency longer than Federal Reserve notes were in existence. Not sure why you'd pay your taxes in gold, but you can, only it would be based on the face value of each gold coin.
    - missedthecue 6y ago
  - csomar 6y ago
    Unless it's only given to the top 0.1%; then it'll make only stock prices higher and some studios in New York City.
- mlyle 6y ago
  I agree totally, but I don't think that provides guidance here. The meat plants have largely stayed open as essential businesses, only closing or even putting in controls when there's a number of employee cases that can no longer be ignored. So in this case, we're not looking at the trade-off between closing companies preemptively to save lives and economic output, but instead the trade-off between closing companies in response to severe sickness throughout the workforce vs. whatever economic could remain in these conditions. I -do- think in a lot of jurisdictions, e.g. the SF Bay Area-- we are going too far. We've had slowly declining ICU occupancy for the past 3 weeks (a trailing indicator behind disease) and now even case counts are falling noticeably even though testing has improved. We should be -slightly- easing controls and seeing if we can keep the disease load constant or falling. Instead we won't even talk about it until May 4th, and I worry we'll either take too much of a step at once or make a tiny movement much later than we should have tried it.
  - bsder 6y ago
    > Instead we won't even talk about it until May 4th, and I worry we'll either take too much of a step at once or make a tiny movement much later than we should have tried it. The problem is we STILL don't have enough equipment for healthcare workers if that ICU starts filling up. Part of the reason for the lockdown was to give time for all the equipment industries to spin up. Unfortunately, the US federal government squandered that. Until the hospitals can deal with a New York scenario and not have the healthcare workers contracting it due to lack of equipment, we shouldn't relax.
    - mlyle 6y ago
      Right now in the SF Bay Area, ICUs are below typical seasonal usage and the usage has been declining slowly for 3 weeks. I'm not saying we should "relax", but I think we have evidence that the slightly looser controls employed from mid-March to early April were effective-- that would be a good first step to go to now. Odds are that results in continued reduction, but if it results in slow growth instead we'd be OK in the time it takes to notice, react, and have the effect of our reaction seen. Frequent, small changes are good. Not big steps and milestones. Population behavior has further changed in beneficial ways, too-- e.g. mask wearing. Step back to the initial health order -now-. In a couple weeks, consider opening a slightly larger chunk of retail. After each step, watch what happens.
- vkou 6y ago
  You're missing some key facts. 1. Meatpacking, and its supporting supply chains is an essential business. No state in the US has lifted a finger to shut it down. 2. These plant shutdowns are caused by people working in meatpacking plants getting sick, and being unable to work. I don't understand how you can blame this on an economic shutdown. If anything, without the shutdown, the meatpackers would have gotten sick sooner, and in greater numbers.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Nit on #2 --- usually these shutdowns are caused by too many people getting sick at the plant, and local authorities pressuring it to shut down, or the plant shutting down out of fear of liability to employees. There has been slowed production due to inadequate workforce, but I don't think many plants have -closed- for this reason.
  - deleted 6y ago
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- nkozyra 6y ago
  Boy I just don't think that's a fair summary of the general view on "the economy." The markets have cascading effect, even if individuals don't own equity. Unemployment is a huge factor in what people generally refer to as "the economy." It's all intertwined and I think most people realize that.
- BLKNSLVR 6y ago
  That becomes an exercise in defining essential services. I'd be interested in seeing the web of dependency for the absolute basics like food, and what other seemingly non-essential services are required in the production and distribution of food. Then, just within food itself, what of people with allergies and special needs, and separating the "real" from the "I think gluten free means healthier" types. It's the kind of dependency complexity that economists would drool over, but during good times it's probably a far less profitable area of research than those that cause economics to be looked down upon as part of the problem.
  - vkou 6y ago
    > That becomes an exercise in defining essential services. I'd be interested in seeing the web of dependency for the absolute basics like food, and what other seemingly non-essential services are required in the production and distribution of food. There aren't any. If you grow food, you're essential. If you ship food, you're essential. If you fix the trucks that ship food, you're essential. If you fix the air conditioner in the auto shop that fixes the trucks that ship food, you're essential. If you make screws for the air conditioner that gets installed in that auto shop, you're essential. Read the shutdown orders. They enumerate essential industries, and the list of them is incredibly broad. In Washington state (Which has one of first, and furthest reaching shutdown orders), if you make literally anything that the military uses... You're essential. The list is incredibly broad. These disruptions are caused directly by the virus getting people sick, and taking them out of work (And their workplaces, until people can get tested, and their workspace can be sanitized) - not the shutdown. The shutdown actually serves to keep these facilities open, because it has reduced the virus's spread through the population.
    - BLKNSLVR 6y ago
      That's exactly why I'd like to see some kind of dependency web. I was going to mention additional things such as the utilities: power, gas, water, but food made the point well enough, and you've demonstrated the reach of one of its tentacles very well. > The shutdown actually serves to keep these facilities open, because it has reduced the virus's spread through the population Yes, in total agreement. I'm in favour of the shutdowns because I can see far enough ahead to know how much worse things would be if they didn't happen. Those who bemoan the damage to the economy strike me as either incredibly short-sighted or selfish or both. Admittedly, however, I'm coming from the lucky and mightily privileged position of not having lost my job (at this point), although I do have "that Damocles feeling" fairly constantly.
- throwlaplace 6y ago
  >Food falls under the economy, the economy isn't just the stock market or things rich people do rich people things in. i'm not a vegetarian but if the choice is between people living and me having access to pork i choose the former.
  - armenarmen 6y ago
    good for you!
    - throwlaplace 6y ago
      are you really being sarcastic? you wouldn't?
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    I don't need pork, a friend sent me some canned spam! But seriously, it's never going to be a binary thing. 100 years ago, people ate far less meat, because it was relatively more expensive and scarcer. While avoiding shopping, I've not been eating meat on a daily basis. Once a week or so is fine.
    - throwlaplace 6y ago
      >But seriously, it's never going to be a binary thing the person i responded to is portraying it as a necessary dichotomy i.e. some sort of catastrophic disruption to the food supply chain. the article in particular discusses pork, not even chicken or beef.
  - CWuestefeld 6y ago
    Luckily, this kind of supply shock isn't possible with produce. </sarcasm> This isn't a problem specific to meat at all; the same kind of interruption to supply chains can occur anywhere through the economy. So you don't necessarily have the option of falling back on veggies.
    - throwlaplace 6y ago
- barkingcat 6y ago
  If you didn't get the memo - meat plants and slaughterhouses are places where you definitely don't want sick workers handling raw meat. If you think about it, meat plants are the wet markets of the US. Albeit with sanitary standards, refrigeration, etc, but if there was going to be another zoonotic crossbreeding event, where the human coronavirus from a sick plant worker merges and mutates with a bovine coronavirus within dying slaughterhouse animals - you could be looking at a worse event. These plants are not shutting down because of precautions, they are shutting down because the plant workers are sick and test positive.
- markdown 6y ago
  > or any move that trades the economy for lives is inherently immoral. I'd love to see some rich people forced to work in meat packing plants alongside men and women infected with this coronavirus. It's inherently immoral to force people to work at great risk to themselves and their families just because "the economy", as would be the case in states where the abhorrent practice of at-will employment is law.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Of course, this raises the question-- what's an unacceptable level of risk? We obviously don't shut everything down because of 1 in 1,000,000 risks. We don't shut everything down for 250 in 1M risks (the flu). Here we have what's likely to be a 1,800 in 1M risk, based on the latest infection fatality rate numbers and the estimate of how many people would be infected before herd immunity. It's 7x worse than the flu. It's also not a risk that it's clear we'll be able to avoid. So here it gets hard to reason about what's right to do. And, of course, we obviously can't act to protect people at a level that will result in worse outcomes, like starvation or famine or collapse of public order.
    - markdown 6y ago
      Which is why shutting down non-essential services is a good half-measure. Meat-packing plants are an essential service, so they are allowed to remain open, but they are temporarily shut down once it becomes evident that a few workers have been infected and the risk of infection for the other workers rises to... as you put it "unacceptable". Sadly, in at-will employment states, only the rich get to decide what is an acceptable level of risk.
      - mlyle 6y ago
        In most at-will states, public health officials have been making the decision about "acceptable level of risk". And, of course, any at-will employee is free to choose to not work in an environment that they personally consider to be too high of a level of risk, even if their employer and local public health officials disagree. I'm in an at-will jurisdiction-- there's a whole bunch of people here who want to work but have been precluded from doing so because of public health orders.
- deleted 6y ago
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ZainRiz 6y ago
Ramadan is starting just in time
- deleted 6y ago
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flomk 6y ago
I wonder if a meat shortage that causes people who previously hadn't eaten plant substitutes, will be enough to let plant substitute companies take a bigger chunk of the meat market for good.
- wtallis 6y ago
  Are any of those plant substitute companies in a position to help offset a meat supply shortfall in any meaningful way? Are the substitutes less labor-intensive to produce or otherwise less affected by the coronavirus?
  - HuShifang 6y ago
    Impossible Foods is expanding its grocery store presence right now, and says that its production plant is less susceptible than meatpacking plants due to increased amounts of automation.... https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/amp/Impossible-Burger-comes-to-Bay-Area-grocery-15205534.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/amp/Impossible-Burger-comes...
- perl4ever 6y ago
  The products you're referring to started out more expensive; why do you think they will become relatively cheaper? And why would people who prefer meat not just eat smaller quantities? If butter becomes more expensive, I'm not going to substitute margarine.
  - flomk 6y ago
    What I meant by "people who previously hadn't eaten plant substitutes" was people who just haven't decided to try it because they just preferred to stick to meat, I should have phrased that better.
- flukus 6y ago
  The problem is that when there is availability fake meat can't compete on price, even with high local meat prices (mostly due to drought) real meat is still a much cheaper option. In my area 500g of ground beef is $6-7, up from $4 a year or two ago, but 300g of fake ground beef is $9. It just doesn't make sense to pay 30% more to get 30% less of an inferior substitute. The question is why is the price so high, is it scale, inherent costs or just a virtue tax?
IIAOPSW 6y ago
One pet peeve I have with this article is that it doesn't explicitly state the cause of the shutdowns are Corona virus infected employees until half way through. I was 90% sure, but there was still a chance of coincidence. Anyway the meat industry isn't special. The whole economy needs to run on stocked up supplies and skeleton crews for a while. That's why its so important to get this right the first time. If the lock down only consists of half-measures and the crisis is prolonged there aren't enough supplies to take another shot at it. Scarily, I'm seeing a whole lot of half-measures right now.
- mlyle 6y ago
  That's not how it's going to work. There's no reasonable way to extinguish this in one swell foop. We need to move (ASAP) in jurisdictions where the virus is largely under control, to half-measures that are hopefully sufficient to prevent another large incident wave and that provide economic output/lets us "stock up again". This will allow a slow reduction in population susceptibility. And we need to be ready to tighten again if it looks like we're going to run out of ICU capacity. As bad as New York's response has been, treading right next to disaster/health care overload, they may have attained a magical proportion of the population where Rt is greatly reduced. I'm betting that when we have the serology study, we'll find 15-30%, or even more-- of the population of NYC has antibodies-- a good chunk of the way to herd immunity and enough to greatly reduce the amount of control measures needed to control the virus.
  - bsder 6y ago
    > a good chunk of the way to herd immunity Herd immunity isn't a solution if your immunity only lasts 6 months. This is NOT a flu virus--this is a Coronavirus--immunity is generally limited for Coronaviruses(virii?). If it's under 12 months, every flu season will likely also be Covid-19 season. Cornavirus immunity seems to top out at about 24-36 months--if you're lucky. SARS seems to be 24, IIRC.
    - mlyle 6y ago
      I think a reasonable somewhat pessimistic (but not worst-case) assumption is that immunity is similar to common-cold coronaviruses; lifelong partial protection, total protection for 24-36 months, some degree of cross-strain reactivity. Kissler et al published a really good analysis of kinematics and transmission dynamics in Science based on what we know about human coronaviruses, cross-immunity, etc. (Now that we are beginning to believe infection rates are even higher in comparison to case counts than we believed before, it looks pessimistic in various ways). The research I've read on SARS-COV-1 shows a slower fall in antibody titers than other human coronaviruses. Though, unfortunately, I'm unaware of any study that followed patients past 3 years. I believe that if you took one of the existing common cold coronaviruses, and introduced it to an immunologically naive population, you'd get a huge incident wave and a whole lot of excess death.
ZainRiz 6y ago
More stories about how covid19 is really screwing up other parts of the supply chain Farmers being forced to pour milk down the drain: https://twitter.com/freshairfarmer/status/1247876205564526593?s=21 https://twitter.com/freshairfarmer/status/124787620556452659... Retail toilet paper manufacturers not setup to handle load from people pooping at home instead of work (and corporate TP factories don't know how to sell to grocery stores): https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0 https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about... Covid testing blocked because of equipment regulations: https://twitter.com/paulmromer/status/1249115887413743616 https://twitter.com/paulmromer/status/1249115887413743616
- perl4ever 6y ago
  Obviously you got to distinguish between problems that are going to get better over time and those that are going to get worse. It seems like people are just randomly assigning things to those categories. I mean, switching products from B2B to B2C (toilet paper, milk, flour, etc) is obviously something that can't happen instantly, but must be taking place as fast as humanly possible, right? So if you're writing an article about impending doom in the coming weeks and months, surely you need to pick a different topic, I would think.
  - vkou 6y ago
    >. I mean, switching products from B2B to B2C (toilet paper, milk, flour, etc) is obviously something that can't happen instantly, but must be taking place as fast as humanly possible, right? No, because half the business world thinks that we're going to all re-open in two weeks, and isn't willing to spend money on any kind of retooling/restructuring for such a short period of time.
    - mlyle 6y ago
      Certainly it is happening. My local stores have small amounts of yeast in little beverage cups with improvised seals, made by yeast manufacturers that usually sell large quantities to restaurants and industrial bread producers. They've also briefly had shitty 1ply commercial toilet paper with big plastic bag and twist-tie packaging.
pascalxus 6y ago
It's not commonly known but Vegetables, Grains and Beans are extremely excellent sources of protein. Most of them have between 10-20% or more of their calories from protein. if you want exact numbers, check out this: https://kale.world/c https://kale.world/c And, if people reduce their meat consumption form these shortages, it could have excellent results on people's health. The last time a country went completely without meat or dairy was in durring the world war, when the Nazis took all the dairy and meat from Sweden. Their rate of heart disease went down dramatically for many years. As soon as the war ended and meat returned, the rate of heart disease sky rocketed back to the original numbers. (source: Forks over knives, a netflix documentary).
- nscalf 6y ago
  Protein from those sources are not as bioavailable, and are therefore not “extremely excellent sources of protein”. Also, forks over knives has been disproven a hundred times over. Not saying everything in that doc is wrong, but it has enough wrong that it is not a credible source of information.
  - pascalxus 6y ago
    The China Study, one of the largest ever undertaken has been vetted and reviewed by 100s and thousands of scientists. The case studies presented in the documentary are accurate and credible, with numerous historical facts. As for bioavailability, the difference isn't very huge and you'll get more then enough amino acids from plant based sources without all the carcinogens that come from animal based sources. Animals do Not make their own protein. They all get it from plants. Plants make the protein. Then the animals eat it. When you eat an animal, your just eating recycled protein. So, why not just cut out the middle man. Meat has many problems. Dr. Milton Mills a stanford doctor, explains it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nti7JrBOQAk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nti7JrBOQAk Also, the people who live in the blue zones (the 100yr+ zones) typically eat very little or no meat/dairy.
  - niklasolai 6y ago
    Yes there is a difference in bio-availability. But have you ever checked what the actual difference is? No? Because then you would know the difference is negligible. "No" people in the western would have a protein deficiency, however many people overeat both kcal and protein. There is no issue in getting enough proteins on a vegan diet/lifestyle.
ortusdux 6y ago
I am concerned that efforts to mitigate the damage from Covid-19 might open a window for African Swine Flu to spread to the US. China has culled 40% of their 440M pig population fighting the virus. There are promising vaccines in the works, but until they come to market a domestic pork viral outbreak could easily get out of hand while we are focused on C19. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00742-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00742-w
sjg007 6y ago
Looks like I’ll be doing a lot of fishing this summer...
williesleg 6y ago
Not hacker news. Why's it here? There's plenty of meat. Bloomberg is fake news. In fact most news is fake. They're just click bait farms like Bloomberg and CNN.
mlyle 6y ago
One thing no one has mentioned in all these articles I've read. Everyone mentions we have about a week of meat in cold storage, and that the level of meat production is falling below typical demand. But it's not like the spigot is turning off / we're stopping all production. What's it falling to? If it's 85% of typical demand, that storage will stretch for awhile, especially because many people may be choosing cheaper staples to consume.
cmurf 6y ago
"the economy" is not any one thing, and this additional story is not enhancing any "the economy" argument. It correctly means everyone should be getting in line to sacrifice. And quite seriously HNers haven't sacrificed near enough. Most are working from home. Most are getting paid. Most have decent health care plans they don't have to worry about. I've been reading HN for six years, and near as I can tell the vast majority don't support any health care rights, let alone universal health care. It's generally acceptable on HN that companies can fire people for being sick for too many days. There's no federally mandated sick leave at all. HNer's don't care about that. I have more sympathy for HN interns who have lost their internships, except about 10 seconds later I remember just how young they are. They'll be fine. And there are all the delivery persons, sacrificing more than most anyone that has the luxury of reading or writing here. Very little is made on HN about how disproportionately health care workers are sacrificing family, sanity, health, and their lives. For no extra pay. They don't tend to get things like bonus pay at the end of the year, common among the HN crowd. Essential workers, most especially the ones stocking grocery stores full of jerks who refuse to wear masks or socially distance, likewise have no health care rights. They don't get bonus pay. If they get sick and are out of work for two months, they aren't assured they will be paid for time they didn't work. HN doesn't care about that. Routinely arguing against "socialist" laws that should try and make life actually fair, as contrary to the free market. Whatever that is. And very little is recognized on HN about the consequences about "reopening" or "resuming" the economy on health care workers. It is a defacto demand: we own you; you are our slaves; you must work to protect us; work harder; sacrifice your lives; and above all, when the inevitably higher case load explodes you will choose who lives and dies. That is your job. To decide. And live with the scar of having chosen who lives and who dies. Deal with it. That is the demand behind every single "reopen" argument. Maybe let's try to avoid freaking out about maybe not having dead pig on our sandwiches? It's degrading. Those workers at shut down plants? They should have unemployment benefits pay them in the vicinity of 80%, at the least. That is not the system we have. HNer's don't care about that. It would be a competitive disincentive to free markets if the government were to compete with shit jobs no one really wants. You know, and then there's the minority who consider universal basic income and universal health care from time to time. And I'm not talking about them. They're they minority on HN, near as I can tell. South Korea has twice the population of NY state, and yet NY state has 62x the deaths. ROK and the U.S. had their first confirmed cases a day apart. It should humiliate every American what has transpired. Federal, state, parties, free market - across the board the result of deaths proves a culture wide incompetency. It's embarrassing.

hpoe 6y ago

This is what concerns as many people have acted like the economy only effects rich people, or any move that trades the economy for lives is inherently immoral. Food falls under the economy, the economy isn't just the stock market or things rich people do rich people things in. The economy is the vast network stretching across the globe that works to supply goods and services in the places they are needed, when the economy starts shutting down so do a lot of things we need for daily life. All the government stimulus in the world isn't going to help anyone if there aren't goods to purchase.

empath75 6y ago
In fact, government stimulus will just cause hyperinflation as more money chases less goods and services.
- mlyle 6y ago
  Not clear. Demand has been pushed way down for things--- perhaps even more than production has been. Stimulus could improve the match of demand to production.
- vkou 6y ago
  1. We would need to print quadrillions of dollars to get hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is a boogieman, unless this administration completely loses its mind. 2. Recessions cause the destruction of money (Due to defaults, and lack of new loans). This causes deflation. If the new money created by the printing press does not exceed these deflationary pressures, you won't even get inflation, let alone hyperinflation. 3. Deflation is horrible, and is much more dangerous than mild inflation. 4. The printed money is currently chasing investment assets (Mostly stocks), not flour and ground beef. Our previous experience with QE did not result in the prices of commodities inflating - only the prices of investments. Inflation is not the problem.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Some stimulus measures are creating money to chase flour and ground beef-- the paycheck protection program, etc, are borrowing (and re-lending) in order to preserve pay to consumers. But I agree it's not most of it.
    - 0x8BADF00D 6y ago
      You won't see it until it's too late. Inflation is a backward looking measure. Expected inflation can be inferred by nominal interest rates. If you look at the corporate debt market those rates are already quite high. What happened in the oil market could easily happen in the gold market, but in reverse. Nobody wanted to take delivery on oil, but a lot of people are going to want to take delivery on gold, because there's a shortage of it. At what point does COMEX go bankrupt when nobody is honoring their word to deliver gold upon expiry? A high gold price would be very bad for dollars, because gold is an alternative reserve currency to dollars. Instead of buying a tbill, someone can just buy gold, hold it, and sell a small portion when they need to buy dollar denominated assets, mainly crude. And crude prices are at historic lows, so you don't need to buy as many dollars as you did before.
      - nradov 6y ago
        What exactly is the mechanism by which Comex would go bankrupt? Commodity delivery contracts are still legally enforceable through the court system, although some civil cases may be delayed several months. Gold is a commodity, not a currency. I can't pay my tax bill in gold.
        0x8BADF00D 6y ago
        > Gold is a commodity, not a currency. I can't pay my tax bill in gold. It was actually a currency longer than Federal Reserve notes were in existence. Not sure why you'd pay your taxes in gold, but you can, only it would be based on the face value of each gold coin.
  - missedthecue 6y ago
- csomar 6y ago
  Unless it's only given to the top 0.1%; then it'll make only stock prices higher and some studios in New York City.
mlyle 6y ago
I agree totally, but I don't think that provides guidance here. The meat plants have largely stayed open as essential businesses, only closing or even putting in controls when there's a number of employee cases that can no longer be ignored. So in this case, we're not looking at the trade-off between closing companies preemptively to save lives and economic output, but instead the trade-off between closing companies in response to severe sickness throughout the workforce vs. whatever economic could remain in these conditions. I -do- think in a lot of jurisdictions, e.g. the SF Bay Area-- we are going too far. We've had slowly declining ICU occupancy for the past 3 weeks (a trailing indicator behind disease) and now even case counts are falling noticeably even though testing has improved. We should be -slightly- easing controls and seeing if we can keep the disease load constant or falling. Instead we won't even talk about it until May 4th, and I worry we'll either take too much of a step at once or make a tiny movement much later than we should have tried it.
- bsder 6y ago
  > Instead we won't even talk about it until May 4th, and I worry we'll either take too much of a step at once or make a tiny movement much later than we should have tried it. The problem is we STILL don't have enough equipment for healthcare workers if that ICU starts filling up. Part of the reason for the lockdown was to give time for all the equipment industries to spin up. Unfortunately, the US federal government squandered that. Until the hospitals can deal with a New York scenario and not have the healthcare workers contracting it due to lack of equipment, we shouldn't relax.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Right now in the SF Bay Area, ICUs are below typical seasonal usage and the usage has been declining slowly for 3 weeks. I'm not saying we should "relax", but I think we have evidence that the slightly looser controls employed from mid-March to early April were effective-- that would be a good first step to go to now. Odds are that results in continued reduction, but if it results in slow growth instead we'd be OK in the time it takes to notice, react, and have the effect of our reaction seen. Frequent, small changes are good. Not big steps and milestones. Population behavior has further changed in beneficial ways, too-- e.g. mask wearing. Step back to the initial health order -now-. In a couple weeks, consider opening a slightly larger chunk of retail. After each step, watch what happens.
vkou 6y ago
You're missing some key facts. 1. Meatpacking, and its supporting supply chains is an essential business. No state in the US has lifted a finger to shut it down. 2. These plant shutdowns are caused by people working in meatpacking plants getting sick, and being unable to work. I don't understand how you can blame this on an economic shutdown. If anything, without the shutdown, the meatpackers would have gotten sick sooner, and in greater numbers.
- mlyle 6y ago
  Nit on #2 --- usually these shutdowns are caused by too many people getting sick at the plant, and local authorities pressuring it to shut down, or the plant shutting down out of fear of liability to employees. There has been slowed production due to inadequate workforce, but I don't think many plants have -closed- for this reason.
- deleted 6y ago
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nkozyra 6y ago
Boy I just don't think that's a fair summary of the general view on "the economy." The markets have cascading effect, even if individuals don't own equity. Unemployment is a huge factor in what people generally refer to as "the economy." It's all intertwined and I think most people realize that.
BLKNSLVR 6y ago
That becomes an exercise in defining essential services. I'd be interested in seeing the web of dependency for the absolute basics like food, and what other seemingly non-essential services are required in the production and distribution of food. Then, just within food itself, what of people with allergies and special needs, and separating the "real" from the "I think gluten free means healthier" types. It's the kind of dependency complexity that economists would drool over, but during good times it's probably a far less profitable area of research than those that cause economics to be looked down upon as part of the problem.
- vkou 6y ago
  > That becomes an exercise in defining essential services. I'd be interested in seeing the web of dependency for the absolute basics like food, and what other seemingly non-essential services are required in the production and distribution of food. There aren't any. If you grow food, you're essential. If you ship food, you're essential. If you fix the trucks that ship food, you're essential. If you fix the air conditioner in the auto shop that fixes the trucks that ship food, you're essential. If you make screws for the air conditioner that gets installed in that auto shop, you're essential. Read the shutdown orders. They enumerate essential industries, and the list of them is incredibly broad. In Washington state (Which has one of first, and furthest reaching shutdown orders), if you make literally anything that the military uses... You're essential. The list is incredibly broad. These disruptions are caused directly by the virus getting people sick, and taking them out of work (And their workplaces, until people can get tested, and their workspace can be sanitized) - not the shutdown. The shutdown actually serves to keep these facilities open, because it has reduced the virus's spread through the population.
  - BLKNSLVR 6y ago
    That's exactly why I'd like to see some kind of dependency web. I was going to mention additional things such as the utilities: power, gas, water, but food made the point well enough, and you've demonstrated the reach of one of its tentacles very well. > The shutdown actually serves to keep these facilities open, because it has reduced the virus's spread through the population Yes, in total agreement. I'm in favour of the shutdowns because I can see far enough ahead to know how much worse things would be if they didn't happen. Those who bemoan the damage to the economy strike me as either incredibly short-sighted or selfish or both. Admittedly, however, I'm coming from the lucky and mightily privileged position of not having lost my job (at this point), although I do have "that Damocles feeling" fairly constantly.
throwlaplace 6y ago
>Food falls under the economy, the economy isn't just the stock market or things rich people do rich people things in. i'm not a vegetarian but if the choice is between people living and me having access to pork i choose the former.
- armenarmen 6y ago
  good for you!
  - throwlaplace 6y ago
    are you really being sarcastic? you wouldn't?
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I don't need pork, a friend sent me some canned spam! But seriously, it's never going to be a binary thing. 100 years ago, people ate far less meat, because it was relatively more expensive and scarcer. While avoiding shopping, I've not been eating meat on a daily basis. Once a week or so is fine.
  - throwlaplace 6y ago
    >But seriously, it's never going to be a binary thing the person i responded to is portraying it as a necessary dichotomy i.e. some sort of catastrophic disruption to the food supply chain. the article in particular discusses pork, not even chicken or beef.
- CWuestefeld 6y ago
  Luckily, this kind of supply shock isn't possible with produce. </sarcasm> This isn't a problem specific to meat at all; the same kind of interruption to supply chains can occur anywhere through the economy. So you don't necessarily have the option of falling back on veggies.
  - throwlaplace 6y ago
barkingcat 6y ago
If you didn't get the memo - meat plants and slaughterhouses are places where you definitely don't want sick workers handling raw meat. If you think about it, meat plants are the wet markets of the US. Albeit with sanitary standards, refrigeration, etc, but if there was going to be another zoonotic crossbreeding event, where the human coronavirus from a sick plant worker merges and mutates with a bovine coronavirus within dying slaughterhouse animals - you could be looking at a worse event. These plants are not shutting down because of precautions, they are shutting down because the plant workers are sick and test positive.
markdown 6y ago
> or any move that trades the economy for lives is inherently immoral. I'd love to see some rich people forced to work in meat packing plants alongside men and women infected with this coronavirus. It's inherently immoral to force people to work at great risk to themselves and their families just because "the economy", as would be the case in states where the abhorrent practice of at-will employment is law.
- mlyle 6y ago
  Of course, this raises the question-- what's an unacceptable level of risk? We obviously don't shut everything down because of 1 in 1,000,000 risks. We don't shut everything down for 250 in 1M risks (the flu). Here we have what's likely to be a 1,800 in 1M risk, based on the latest infection fatality rate numbers and the estimate of how many people would be infected before herd immunity. It's 7x worse than the flu. It's also not a risk that it's clear we'll be able to avoid. So here it gets hard to reason about what's right to do. And, of course, we obviously can't act to protect people at a level that will result in worse outcomes, like starvation or famine or collapse of public order.
  - markdown 6y ago
    Which is why shutting down non-essential services is a good half-measure. Meat-packing plants are an essential service, so they are allowed to remain open, but they are temporarily shut down once it becomes evident that a few workers have been infected and the risk of infection for the other workers rises to... as you put it "unacceptable". Sadly, in at-will employment states, only the rich get to decide what is an acceptable level of risk.
    - mlyle 6y ago
      In most at-will states, public health officials have been making the decision about "acceptable level of risk". And, of course, any at-will employee is free to choose to not work in an environment that they personally consider to be too high of a level of risk, even if their employer and local public health officials disagree. I'm in an at-will jurisdiction-- there's a whole bunch of people here who want to work but have been precluded from doing so because of public health orders.
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ZainRiz 6y ago

Ramadan is starting just in time

deleted 6y ago
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flomk 6y ago

I wonder if a meat shortage that causes people who previously hadn't eaten plant substitutes, will be enough to let plant substitute companies take a bigger chunk of the meat market for good.

wtallis 6y ago
Are any of those plant substitute companies in a position to help offset a meat supply shortfall in any meaningful way? Are the substitutes less labor-intensive to produce or otherwise less affected by the coronavirus?
- HuShifang 6y ago
  Impossible Foods is expanding its grocery store presence right now, and says that its production plant is less susceptible than meatpacking plants due to increased amounts of automation.... https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/amp/Impossible-Burger-comes-to-Bay-Area-grocery-15205534.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/amp/Impossible-Burger-comes...
perl4ever 6y ago
The products you're referring to started out more expensive; why do you think they will become relatively cheaper? And why would people who prefer meat not just eat smaller quantities? If butter becomes more expensive, I'm not going to substitute margarine.
- flomk 6y ago
  What I meant by "people who previously hadn't eaten plant substitutes" was people who just haven't decided to try it because they just preferred to stick to meat, I should have phrased that better.
flukus 6y ago
The problem is that when there is availability fake meat can't compete on price, even with high local meat prices (mostly due to drought) real meat is still a much cheaper option. In my area 500g of ground beef is $6-7, up from $4 a year or two ago, but 300g of fake ground beef is $9. It just doesn't make sense to pay 30% more to get 30% less of an inferior substitute. The question is why is the price so high, is it scale, inherent costs or just a virtue tax?

IIAOPSW 6y ago

One pet peeve I have with this article is that it doesn't explicitly state the cause of the shutdowns are Corona virus infected employees until half way through. I was 90% sure, but there was still a chance of coincidence. Anyway the meat industry isn't special. The whole economy needs to run on stocked up supplies and skeleton crews for a while. That's why its so important to get this right the first time. If the lock down only consists of half-measures and the crisis is prolonged there aren't enough supplies to take another shot at it. Scarily, I'm seeing a whole lot of half-measures right now.

mlyle 6y ago
That's not how it's going to work. There's no reasonable way to extinguish this in one swell foop. We need to move (ASAP) in jurisdictions where the virus is largely under control, to half-measures that are hopefully sufficient to prevent another large incident wave and that provide economic output/lets us "stock up again". This will allow a slow reduction in population susceptibility. And we need to be ready to tighten again if it looks like we're going to run out of ICU capacity. As bad as New York's response has been, treading right next to disaster/health care overload, they may have attained a magical proportion of the population where Rt is greatly reduced. I'm betting that when we have the serology study, we'll find 15-30%, or even more-- of the population of NYC has antibodies-- a good chunk of the way to herd immunity and enough to greatly reduce the amount of control measures needed to control the virus.
- bsder 6y ago
  > a good chunk of the way to herd immunity Herd immunity isn't a solution if your immunity only lasts 6 months. This is NOT a flu virus--this is a Coronavirus--immunity is generally limited for Coronaviruses(virii?). If it's under 12 months, every flu season will likely also be Covid-19 season. Cornavirus immunity seems to top out at about 24-36 months--if you're lucky. SARS seems to be 24, IIRC.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    I think a reasonable somewhat pessimistic (but not worst-case) assumption is that immunity is similar to common-cold coronaviruses; lifelong partial protection, total protection for 24-36 months, some degree of cross-strain reactivity. Kissler et al published a really good analysis of kinematics and transmission dynamics in Science based on what we know about human coronaviruses, cross-immunity, etc. (Now that we are beginning to believe infection rates are even higher in comparison to case counts than we believed before, it looks pessimistic in various ways). The research I've read on SARS-COV-1 shows a slower fall in antibody titers than other human coronaviruses. Though, unfortunately, I'm unaware of any study that followed patients past 3 years. I believe that if you took one of the existing common cold coronaviruses, and introduced it to an immunologically naive population, you'd get a huge incident wave and a whole lot of excess death.

ZainRiz 6y ago

More stories about how covid19 is really screwing up other parts of the supply chain Farmers being forced to pour milk down the drain: https://twitter.com/freshairfarmer/status/1247876205564526593?s=21 https://twitter.com/freshairfarmer/status/124787620556452659... Retail toilet paper manufacturers not setup to handle load from people pooping at home instead of work (and corporate TP factories don't know how to sell to grocery stores): https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0 https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about... Covid testing blocked because of equipment regulations: https://twitter.com/paulmromer/status/1249115887413743616 https://twitter.com/paulmromer/status/1249115887413743616

perl4ever 6y ago
Obviously you got to distinguish between problems that are going to get better over time and those that are going to get worse. It seems like people are just randomly assigning things to those categories. I mean, switching products from B2B to B2C (toilet paper, milk, flour, etc) is obviously something that can't happen instantly, but must be taking place as fast as humanly possible, right? So if you're writing an article about impending doom in the coming weeks and months, surely you need to pick a different topic, I would think.
- vkou 6y ago
  >. I mean, switching products from B2B to B2C (toilet paper, milk, flour, etc) is obviously something that can't happen instantly, but must be taking place as fast as humanly possible, right? No, because half the business world thinks that we're going to all re-open in two weeks, and isn't willing to spend money on any kind of retooling/restructuring for such a short period of time.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Certainly it is happening. My local stores have small amounts of yeast in little beverage cups with improvised seals, made by yeast manufacturers that usually sell large quantities to restaurants and industrial bread producers. They've also briefly had shitty 1ply commercial toilet paper with big plastic bag and twist-tie packaging.

pascalxus 6y ago

It's not commonly known but Vegetables, Grains and Beans are extremely excellent sources of protein. Most of them have between 10-20% or more of their calories from protein. if you want exact numbers, check out this: https://kale.world/c https://kale.world/c And, if people reduce their meat consumption form these shortages, it could have excellent results on people's health. The last time a country went completely without meat or dairy was in durring the world war, when the Nazis took all the dairy and meat from Sweden. Their rate of heart disease went down dramatically for many years. As soon as the war ended and meat returned, the rate of heart disease sky rocketed back to the original numbers. (source: Forks over knives, a netflix documentary).

nscalf 6y ago
Protein from those sources are not as bioavailable, and are therefore not “extremely excellent sources of protein”. Also, forks over knives has been disproven a hundred times over. Not saying everything in that doc is wrong, but it has enough wrong that it is not a credible source of information.
- pascalxus 6y ago
  The China Study, one of the largest ever undertaken has been vetted and reviewed by 100s and thousands of scientists. The case studies presented in the documentary are accurate and credible, with numerous historical facts. As for bioavailability, the difference isn't very huge and you'll get more then enough amino acids from plant based sources without all the carcinogens that come from animal based sources. Animals do Not make their own protein. They all get it from plants. Plants make the protein. Then the animals eat it. When you eat an animal, your just eating recycled protein. So, why not just cut out the middle man. Meat has many problems. Dr. Milton Mills a stanford doctor, explains it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nti7JrBOQAk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nti7JrBOQAk Also, the people who live in the blue zones (the 100yr+ zones) typically eat very little or no meat/dairy.
- niklasolai 6y ago
  Yes there is a difference in bio-availability. But have you ever checked what the actual difference is? No? Because then you would know the difference is negligible. "No" people in the western would have a protein deficiency, however many people overeat both kcal and protein. There is no issue in getting enough proteins on a vegan diet/lifestyle.

ortusdux 6y ago

I am concerned that efforts to mitigate the damage from Covid-19 might open a window for African Swine Flu to spread to the US. China has culled 40% of their 440M pig population fighting the virus. There are promising vaccines in the works, but until they come to market a domestic pork viral outbreak could easily get out of hand while we are focused on C19. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00742-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00742-w

sjg007 6y ago

Looks like I’ll be doing a lot of fishing this summer...

williesleg 6y ago

Not hacker news. Why's it here? There's plenty of meat. Bloomberg is fake news. In fact most news is fake. They're just click bait farms like Bloomberg and CNN.

mlyle 6y ago

One thing no one has mentioned in all these articles I've read. Everyone mentions we have about a week of meat in cold storage, and that the level of meat production is falling below typical demand. But it's not like the spigot is turning off / we're stopping all production. What's it falling to? If it's 85% of typical demand, that storage will stretch for awhile, especially because many people may be choosing cheaper staples to consume.

cmurf 6y ago

"the economy" is not any one thing, and this additional story is not enhancing any "the economy" argument. It correctly means everyone should be getting in line to sacrifice. And quite seriously HNers haven't sacrificed near enough. Most are working from home. Most are getting paid. Most have decent health care plans they don't have to worry about. I've been reading HN for six years, and near as I can tell the vast majority don't support any health care rights, let alone universal health care. It's generally acceptable on HN that companies can fire people for being sick for too many days. There's no federally mandated sick leave at all. HNer's don't care about that. I have more sympathy for HN interns who have lost their internships, except about 10 seconds later I remember just how young they are. They'll be fine. And there are all the delivery persons, sacrificing more than most anyone that has the luxury of reading or writing here. Very little is made on HN about how disproportionately health care workers are sacrificing family, sanity, health, and their lives. For no extra pay. They don't tend to get things like bonus pay at the end of the year, common among the HN crowd. Essential workers, most especially the ones stocking grocery stores full of jerks who refuse to wear masks or socially distance, likewise have no health care rights. They don't get bonus pay. If they get sick and are out of work for two months, they aren't assured they will be paid for time they didn't work. HN doesn't care about that. Routinely arguing against "socialist" laws that should try and make life actually fair, as contrary to the free market. Whatever that is. And very little is recognized on HN about the consequences about "reopening" or "resuming" the economy on health care workers. It is a defacto demand: we own you; you are our slaves; you must work to protect us; work harder; sacrifice your lives; and above all, when the inevitably higher case load explodes you will choose who lives and dies. That is your job. To decide. And live with the scar of having chosen who lives and who dies. Deal with it. That is the demand behind every single "reopen" argument. Maybe let's try to avoid freaking out about maybe not having dead pig on our sandwiches? It's degrading. Those workers at shut down plants? They should have unemployment benefits pay them in the vicinity of 80%, at the least. That is not the system we have. HNer's don't care about that. It would be a competitive disincentive to free markets if the government were to compete with shit jobs no one really wants. You know, and then there's the minority who consider universal basic income and universal health care from time to time. And I'm not talking about them. They're they minority on HN, near as I can tell. South Korea has twice the population of NY state, and yet NY state has 62x the deaths. ROK and the U.S. had their first confirmed cases a day apart. It should humiliate every American what has transpired. Federal, state, parties, free market - across the board the result of deaths proves a culture wide incompetency. It's embarrassing.