This reminds me of "Volunteer Firefighters", "Motorcyle Club Supporters", and most recently Nurses...
Just as a head's up, people are trying to create the illusion of a meat shortage to recoup lost profits.
Retard doctors.
I'm not going to speak for other areas but we have 2 major meat processing plants shutdown in southern AB
consult your doctor. My friend has to wear a mask when he is in his office so basically whole day and he gets headaches and feels as if his eyes were about to pop out of his sockets
Long story short is that most meat goes to restaurants and most restaurants are closed. In North America meat demand has taken a dump since the beginning of the Rona.
I think that makes a certain sense, but testing hasn't been handled uniformly so we still don't know much about the truth of spread. I've been symptomatic since April 24th and called the doctor today, but was told to just stay home unless I can't breathe at which point I should go to the ER. It was explained this was due to the ongoing testing shortage. I'm in Philadelphia where community spread has been growing and that's the line. Not sure what it's like it Montana or Iowa, but I do know it's the same in New York.
Besides the testing number inaccuracy, the other issue is we don't know how many asymptomatic folks are sitting at home who will encounter others once unleashed. Now granted, within a couple weeks of not going out, it's possible they'll be fine anyway, so maybe let's get them back to work. But back to work doing what? What jobs are there demand for right now? In an economy that's already shed millions of jobs and where people are grappling with months of lost income, what are people going to be able and willing to buy? And what about people whose work depends on global or regional supply chains or demand, either of which may be disrupted? Businesses are going to try to reopen and some will have demand, but many will fail, igniting a secondary economic downturn. Add to this the prospect that there could be further community spread necessitating a secondary lockdown and now you get people in very desperate circumstances.
So what's the solution to this? I don't really know. It's quite a conundrum and it seems like there are few if any ways out of it where people don't suffer and die. The federal government could offer ongoing relief directly to individuals in the form of stimulus, which may offset some of the demand problem. They could offer further subsidies to business to offset the supply problem or become a primary buyer of goods and services. They could also nationalize a few industries, but that doesn't solve the problem of how to actually put people back to work. What does precautionary social distancing look like in a meat packing plant? In an office? In a private school? Government has by and large passed the buck on setting these guidelines and told businesses to figure it out. Do you really trust the regional manager at Cracker Barrel to come up with a plan on their own? Do you trust that whatever plan the corporate offices for Target have implemented has realistically been safe to date? Look at the rates of essential workers still getting sick. They overwhelmingly comprise the numbers in those states with low numbers because they're out there regularly. This speaks to poor plans to protect them as well as the high transmissibility of the virus. A useful number to have would be how many essentials have gotten sick since this started.
I don't expect governments to have all the answers, and in this political climate, I certainly don't expect them to be able to take all the steps necessary to keep us afloat. But what I do expect is their not abdicating responsibility. I expect them to give their best effort to try to keep people safe and solvent. If you go back to work and someone beside you is suddenly coughing and your boss refuses to send them home or move you, who's responsible? What recourse do you have? If customers keep coming in, how should they be informed of possible risk? Government doesn't have to answer these questions, but they do have the ability to at least compel businesses to come up with plans for how they might answer them. Similarly, if Joe's Flower Shop reopens and no one is coming there because who wants to take the risk for flowers so Joe loses money and can't make rent (and he's already 2 months behind), do we just leave it to the market? Given the circumstances, we can't say we're in a fair or free market. What relief can the state give in such cases so Joe and his family aren't homeless and drawing a much greater toll on state resources in 2 months? Again, questions neither the nation nor the states should just pass on answering. Further, with lost revenues, states are making heavy budget cuts. The Senate Majority Leader says let them declare bankruptcy, which means a bunch of people could lose their pensions and end up staying in the workforce longer, crowding out entry or junior level job seekers, which there will be plenty of. That's assuming those more senior folks even get to keep their jobs in the first place. Other workers 401Ks and 403bs and other investment vehicles have been considerably devalued, so what do they do? They certainly don't give up their jobs if they can help it. And what do they do with their kids? They're not in school. Funding has been cut for summer camps and other things, so who watches them while people try to work? Are those people getting tested?
I say all this to say a fragmented reopening plan won't fix much and raises more questions that no one seems willing to really answer besides vague guideline charts. Opening will maybe put some people in a better position short term before the next wave in the fall, but what about when that hits? It's my view government should be taking the lead on providing the framework for answering these questions, if not answering a few themselves. What would be preferable is if that plan began with a serious diagnostic testing program along with contact tracing to come up with evidence informed ways to reimagine how essential and other work can get done. As it stands, governments are mostly saying ok, we'll let up here and there once we know hospitals won't collapse and that the number of positive tests seems okay, but now we get back to the problem of who is getting tested and how. If they get higher fail rate antibody tests (instead of diagnostic), can we even trust those numbers?
Everyone is punting. Everyone is lying. To take New York as an example, Cuomo is being as much of a snake as Trump. Deblasio is completely useless. They've already decided some will die and it's okay. They've also decided some will go hungry and that's okay too. It's a tough situation and I wouldn't want to be in any of their shoes, but I would appreciate it if they were at least more honest about what's going on. Or if they didn't say things like "well, people are going to have to figure it out." Humans are resilient and adaptable. We can figure out a lot. But there are still considerable information gaps with this thing and certainly there's uneven information distribution. There's also uneven consideration as we've seen in some industries where bosses have just told workers they'll be fine without providing any safety equipment or where it's almost impossible to do the work with distancing. This is why we were on the verge of a meat shortage and now the fed has jumped in to say keep working, even if you're likely to get sick. No one is stepping up there to do testing, so "meat is murder" is taking on a whole new meaning.
I would like widespread government commitment to providing testing and protective equipment (a promise that was made and not kept). I'd also like to hear more about what the state will do to prevent or offset real economic devastation outside the tepid steps they've thus far taken. Until then, reopening is mostly just something to make people temporarily feel better and get them a few bucks in the short term, maybe enough to buy COBRA once their insurance is cut off. The other possibility is that the doomers are wrong and governments and businesses get lucky. We suddenly all become immune and go skipping back into the air with no resurgence. The evidence doesn't suggest this is what's coming, but nothing is impossible. Seems prudent to have a plan for either outcome, but too many have bought into the optimistic scenario because that's what some in government and many in the private sector have been hard selling. I'd love nothing more than for them to be right, but it's an incredibly dangerous game.
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When processing plants close, producers cant send their animals to slaughter. Canadian pig farmers cant send their animals to the states because the producers there are faced with the same problem.
Farmers are losing $30-$50 per pig. So farmers can't sell them and they can't hold them for 3+ months for the markets to correct, their facilities simply arent designed to hold that much livestock.
Their solution? Euthenization.
trudy will bring in some TFWs and have them up and running in no time
That's a meat surplus, not a meat shortage.
Not in Texas, we've been emptying the shelves.
Again, 2 major meat processing plants are shutdown in my area. Sure farmers have lots but if they cant get their product on store shelves then the store shelves are gonna look pretty barren, which is exactly how they are in my area.
Maybe where you live, but that's not the case across North America.
Texas is the best country in North America, so we have that going for us.
and stores here have removed limits on meat purchase because they're discounting it, then throwing it out. But I recognize that doesn't mean it's the case everywhere. Now when the people in charge of the industry say "Demand is way down." I'm inclined to believe them. You'll notice the people sounding the shortage alarm are investors. If memroy serves it was Bloomberg Business who "broke" this story over the weekend.
Another added benefit of not fucking everything up from the beginning like the US - you can actually test anyone that has symptoms because you no longer need to ration the tests. In Oz, we've moved from not only making tests available to everyone but campaigning to trying to get anyone with any flu symptoms at all to get tested.
It's a virtuous cycle vs a vicious cycle. You start by getting on top of it, you can stop rationing tests, which means you catch more positives, which means you get more on top of it. You start by fucking it up, you have to ration more tests, you identify less positives, which means you get more fucked up.
It's starting to look like the US should have just gone full Sweden. If you are going to half-ass it, you might as well just focus on flattening the curve a little, pile up a few million bodies and then just move on. Because right now, you're just getting the worst of both approaches - slowly wrecking the economy while doing a piss poor job of containment.
The scary truth is though, if no vaccine/treatment can be found and this thing stays, countries like Australia will have actually made a terrible mistake by being too successful with containment, because we will just have to go through the whole thing again.
I'm not convinced the demand has been too greatly affected around here.
Restaurants have slowed down, but are finding other ways with curbside pickup, delivery plus all the apps like uber eats etc.
All the fast food joints are still rolling, Peter's drivein, popular fastfood diner has actually seen increased business.
Couple all that with the panic buying and demand has been par for the course imo.
Wife was at costco monday evening. No big beef cuts, no pork ribs or pork shoulder, just tenderloin. The only chicken was breasts and drums.
I checked a couple local butchers and they have stopped doing bulk buys because of the demand.
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That's a local shortage. As I said what's true at your local store isn't necessarily true for the entire supply chain.
People also need to stop going to Costco during this pandemic, but that's another story.
I can't say I read all that bro
but I honestly think the lack of testing is intentional
Impressive wall of text for sure, U have the gift