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5th May 2020, 09:54 AM | #81 |
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I don't care who they are or what color they are - anyone who intentionally goes without a mask and proper behavior when they ought to be doing otherwise (possibly even by law) is a "muh rights" person.
It's senseless to limit the use of the phrase "muh rights" to a very specific demographic or subculture. |
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5th May 2020, 10:20 AM | #82 |
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Okay, so I kind of feel like I'm missing something here. I mean, I totally get the hotspots, and plants closing down and how that disrupts the supply chain. What I'm not getting is farmers killing livestock that isn't being processed. I follow that they can't afford the feed for the animals.
But why can't they just turn them loose and let them fend for themselves? I mean, let 2000 chickens loose in the area, and the local predators will be really happy. But I'm also betting that there's a lot of people who would be perfectly willing to go "hunt" those chickens and slaughter them on their own. Same with cows. We'll end up with a bunch of cows all over the place, some really satisfied wolves, and a solid grip of hunters willing to hunt and dress those cows for their own (or their neighbor's consumption). Maybe not an ideal solution, but it seems somewhat better than just killing them all and letting them rot. So I'm guessing I'm missing some key element in this that makes it not an option. Anyone feel like educating me? |
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5th May 2020, 10:22 AM | #83 |
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5th May 2020, 11:04 AM | #84 |
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Where would they be released? I mean, modern meat and dairy production is based on feeding grain to the animals, not grazing them in pastures. Most of these animals are far away from any forage sufficient to maintain them.
If you did release them into pastures, there would be severe over-grazing with attendant erosion and water quality issues, invasive plant issues, all that. |
5th May 2020, 11:08 AM | #85 |
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I am feeling like you missed something. There is no indication that these people are intentionally not wearing masks. None at all. They are not going on about rights or anything else.
What they are doing is living in dangerously overcrowded conditions and suffering from poor quality or nonexistent healthcare because they are very poor. The spread may have as much to do with living conditions as it does with the workplace. |
5th May 2020, 11:15 AM | #86 |
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There really are not enough foxes in the neighborhood to eat 2000 chickens. You would basically be unleashing a massive wave of an invasive species into an ecosystem, with not enough food to support them.
The turkey vultures would be pretty happy, though. And, obviously, doing the same with pigs and cows wouldn't work at all. In my humble opinion, a bit of planning and perhaps some government subsidization could prevent it, but that isn't happening. |
5th May 2020, 12:05 PM | #87 |
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It's probably illegal to intentionally release domestic livestock animals into the wild.
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5th May 2020, 12:09 PM | #88 |
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Are you really advocating that farmers *give away* the animals they've invested a lot of time and money into?? There will be an 'after coronavirus', how are you proposing that they replace their livestock then? The whole point of mitigation and social support is so that the farms will still exist after the crisis!
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5th May 2020, 12:23 PM | #89 |
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5th May 2020, 12:27 PM | #90 |
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I don't think I missed anything. We really don't have any idea what these tens (or hundreds) of thousands of meat processing workers do when they leave work. I see that they wear masks at work. We also don't know if they remove the mask for their lunch break at work with others around them doing the same. Maybe a 6 foot distance isn't enough when people are without masks and yapping to each other while on break.
We also have no clue what they think about rights and it isn't decided one way or another if you don't see their faces at protests or on the news.
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The way I see it, anybody who isn't wearing proper gear and with proper behavior is a "muh rights" person and I don't even care what their personal feelings are. As far as the virus is concerned, they are identical. A MAGA "muh rights" Redneck without a mask is the same as a poor Somali immigrant meat worker without a mask. Both of them can kill others or be killed themselves because this virus is a bitch. |
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5th May 2020, 12:29 PM | #91 |
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5th May 2020, 12:30 PM | #92 |
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5th May 2020, 12:32 PM | #93 |
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Because when they send them for slaughter they are recouping some of the costs in selling the meat. Most of the farmers who say they have to liquidate their holdings are assuming the slaughterhouses will remain active and buy the meat, perhaps even that the meat-packing plants will stop closing now that the government is going to force those employees back to work. They're not giving the animals away. Most farmers don't have near the capability to kill their animals, they only produce them.
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5th May 2020, 12:34 PM | #94 |
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Perhaps I misunderstood the articles I read. I was under the impression that the farmers are killing the animals because they can't afford to feed them, but the slaughterhouses aren't taking them because they've closed down due to COVID. I thought the problem was stemming from the fact that some of the meat processing plants have closed.
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5th May 2020, 12:37 PM | #95 |
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5th May 2020, 12:39 PM | #96 |
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5th May 2020, 12:54 PM | #97 |
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For perspective, it's not unusual for large chicken farms to have up to a million birds and more. More than a hundred thousand birds is common.
You cannot intentionally release those into the wild. It can't be legal and the social ramifications would be extreme. |
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5th May 2020, 12:55 PM | #98 |
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That's exactly right. The animals are being killed and the bodies disposed of by burying. (So I read. Burning? I don't know. One way or another, they are being killed and not eaten.)
Could the government step in and pay for the cost of transport to an available slaughterhouse, that has some spare capacity, and then either give the meat away or juggle the money so that only the government (i.e. us, i.e taxpayers) end up paying a portion of the cost? I would think so, but I'm sure the details are complicated. |
5th May 2020, 12:59 PM | #99 |
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My guess is that the Wendy's shortages are local. The regional Wendy's probably has a contract with one company, perhaps with a backup, to supply a whole heck of a lot of beef from one really big slaughterhouse. If that one goes down, then so do the Wendy's restaurants served by that one.
I've read that the same thing can happen with grocery stores. One distributor loses its shipment, so their stores go without, while the stores across the street have plenty, because their distributor gets the meat from a different facility. So far, I'm not reading about real crises or real shortages, just inconvenience and difficulty. Even the stories about chickens or pigs being killed and not eaten are mostly small scale, local, problems. I said I would give credit where credit is due if things are still ok this week. It seems like they are. So, Trump and team haven't done anything incredibly stupid, or failed to do the minimum. We'll see how that holds up in the weeks ahead. |
5th May 2020, 01:12 PM | #100 |
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5th May 2020, 01:21 PM | #101 |
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5th May 2020, 01:26 PM | #102 |
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Yet, I am reading that they are (in some cases) killing animals and composting- or otherwise disposing of- the corpses.
That is not recouping any cost, as selling to the slaughterhouse does, so the question stands. How is giving the animals away substantively different for the producer than wasting them? |
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5th May 2020, 02:41 PM | #103 |
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5th May 2020, 02:43 PM | #104 |
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I wonder if my HOA would let me have a couple of hens? I like fresh eggs.
I doubt they'd be okay with me putting a dairy cow int eh back yard though. And I'm really not sure I'm down with milking her every day either. |
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5th May 2020, 03:14 PM | #105 |
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I'd not known that some were resorting to slaughtering the excess stock themselves, but as to why they don't give it away I can only ask---how? A line of people showing up to carry off an animal each? Transport trucks taking them away----to where? Food banks are scattered everywhere, and aren't going to be able to handle a huge sudden influx. All of these options are incompatible with minimizing contacts between large groups of people. Given that this crisis is supposed to be temporary, and we're supposed to be able to pick up again after it's over, we need to provide support for the very bottom, the anchor, of the supply chains, to ensure they don't come loose and break away when we have to put weight on them again.
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5th May 2020, 03:28 PM | #106 |
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5th May 2020, 03:28 PM | #107 |
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Why not make the meat-packing jobs safer? It's not like we don't know how to do that.
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5th May 2020, 03:30 PM | #108 |
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5th May 2020, 05:01 PM | #109 |
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7th May 2020, 12:02 PM | #110 |
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'It's their own fault': HHS Secretary Alex Azar says meat processing workers' 'home and social conditions' are to blame for rapid spread of coronavirus - not their working conditions
Originally Posted by Daily Mail
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7th May 2020, 12:07 PM | #111 |
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Quote:
So, this quote here demonstrates that Secretary Azar, and I think we can assume everyone at the top of the Trump coronavirus team, knows that there is a problem. We know there is a problem, and we know that they know, because they are at least considering solutions to the problem. And we know that their proposed solution is dumb as hell, which is exactly what we would expect. ETA: Meanwhile, more and more stories in the news about limited selections and higher prices. Still not a real crisis, but definitely a small problem that is threatening to become a big problem. And what is Team Trump doing about it? Well Azar says the above is "an inaccurate representation of Secretary's Azar's comments", but since that's the only thing we've heard, I think we can assume that it is actually a pretty accurate representation. i.e. it is being dismissed as insignificant, and certainly not the fault of anyone important. |
11th May 2020, 11:53 AM | #112 |
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11th May 2020, 03:15 PM | #113 |
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I think the answer was because invoking the Defense Production Act was the easiest thing to do that didn't actually require a real plan. We have a real issue with meat plants closing down, so issue an executive order that says they have to stay open...….except it doesn't actually say that.
To be fair, while there is some disruption in supply, it still isn't a crisis, so I can't say that his policies have been a disaster in this case. Heck, for all I know, he or his administration may have absolutely done something useful. I'm not aware of it, but it could have happened. It's not like CNN is going to put "Trump Saves Meat Supply" in a headline, so if anyone knows of anything he actually did, as opposed to issuing an insignificant executive order, by all means talk about it here. |
12th May 2020, 04:56 AM | #114 |
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My main point here is I would believe there are disaster plans that have been in place for years that deal with monitoring this and many supply chains. If not someone has been squandering our tax dollars.
Long before anyone even dreamed of a President Trump.
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12th May 2020, 05:15 AM | #115 |
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Obviously something is a badly wrong with the commercial supply chain the US. In the UK we had the same issues with supplies of things like meat, but by and large supermarkets and their supply chains have adapted and if the range of meat products has been narrowed, shops longer carrying 20 different kinds of sausages, availability seems fine, so yeah it sounds like there's a systemic fault in the US chain.
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12th May 2020, 07:53 AM | #116 |
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They should be aware of the situation well enough to know that a crisis is about to happen, and should intervene to prevent it.
In other words, right at this minute, it is an inconvenience. If it is not likely to be worse than that in the future, then no intervention is necessary, beyond what is already being done. However, the future is pretty predictable, to those with the data. They should be looking ahead, and if it is likely that the situation will get worse, then they should intervene now to prevent it. |
12th May 2020, 09:33 AM | #117 |
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12th May 2020, 12:08 PM | #118 |
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I've just been to the stores. Meat supplies were near-normal. Pork was a bit sparse my first time by but five minutes later the employee was there filling the case from a big cart-load.
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12th May 2020, 01:21 PM | #119 |
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12th May 2020, 02:26 PM | #120 |
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No shortages here in Durham, NC yet, either. I was at the grocery store yesterday morning and had an abundance of choices, although a two item limit on some of them. Bought 5 lbs. of chicken breasts (could have gotten 10 with the two item limit, but my freezer is getting full), four different kinds of sausages, and a ham (spiral cut). Also toilet paper, which, I confess, I didn't really need. In my defense there was serendipity involved. I'm probably good on the TP front through at least November. Mebbe 2020. Anything remotely resembling a disinfectant product was a no go, though. Literally bare shelves. |
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