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Exactly. Consider the US meat supply chain. 15 % of production capacity is off-line because the workforce is sick. It's not that they are at home afraid of real
by HarryHirsch 7y ago
Exactly. Consider the US meat supply chain. 15 % of production capacity is off-line because the workforce is sick. It's not that they are at home afraid of real or imagined dangers, they cannot report to work because they are too ill. (Strangely, it's only the US. You don't hear about this from Italy, Germany or Britain.)
What are they going to do about it, conscript people to go work at Smithfield or Tyson until they fall over with coronaplague, too? You can't just issue edicts, you have to suppress transmission.
- vonmoltke 7y agoIt's offline because someone at those plants got sick and the companies can't operate the plants safely or effectively without additional PPE or modifications. The vast majority of the workforce itself is fine, and people are not what is needed to restart the plants.
- ashtonkem 7y agoYeah, that’s kind of the problem. Sick people can’t make an economy go. Of course we can eventually re-open, we have to re-open eventually; we’ll starve if we don’t. But we have to actually make decisions and come up with strategies that’ll make it possible for us to re-open first. If we pretend that we can just reopen the economy without doing that first, people will get sicker and the economy won’t get better.
- HarryHirsch 7y agoThe plant is shut down because it's a safety hazard to operate in its current form. It's a transmission hotspot, 200 people have tested positive, according to the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/13/south-dakota-pork-plant-closes-after-200-workers-contract-covid-19 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/13/south-dakota...
- ashtonkem 7y ago6.5% of the plant is already sick, and that’s half of the states positive cases. That’s ... less than great.