Coronavirus **support** thread
161 watchers
Jun 2020
11:33am, 22 Jun 2020
1,226 posts
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Grast_girl
Hope you get good news USB. Agreed Canute, some of the biggest outbreaks in the US have been meat plants. bbc.co.uk Back in March There's also mention or France, Germany, Ireland, so it must be something consistent about the environment, such as the cold, steel surfaces, difficulty distancing and language barriers that are the problem as Canute says. |
Jun 2020
11:35am, 22 Jun 2020
443 posts
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JR
Excuse my ignorance but is ‘meat processing’ where they make other things from meat - burgers etc or does it include actual abattoir etc? If the former them must be the best advert ever for local, non processed real meat rather than ‘meat products’ !
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Jun 2020
11:37am, 22 Jun 2020
444 posts
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JR
I know someone who has been working throughout in local ‘very famous Yorkshire cheese’ factory. As far as I know no outbreaks there & I would have thought similar temps/working conditions?
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Jun 2020
11:41am, 22 Jun 2020
43,487 posts
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Derby Tup
I would suspect a relatively small ‘creamery’ is a completely different environment to a ‘meat precessing plant’. Much small in scale, higher margin product, higher end outlets
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Jun 2020
11:41am, 22 Jun 2020
17,819 posts
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EvilPixie
JR Germany has had outbreaks in abattoirs so it's a combination I think Not sure cheese would be the same as meat? not so many people there |
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Jun 2020
11:43am, 22 Jun 2020
1,228 posts
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Grast_girl
JR - I think it's mostly the butchering side which is the problem, so after the abattoir, but before steaks etc are packaged. I think most meat product factories would generally be about the same risk as the local biscuit factory in that you don't actually need that many people to keep things moving once you have a fairly consistent product to work with. If cheese is made the traditional way (hand cutting curds etc) then it could have some similar problems, but it's usually done on a much smaller scale, in batches and there's usually a bit of space between people. |
Jun 2020
1:07pm, 22 Jun 2020
19,993 posts
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Dvorak
I read that BBC piece at the time and my thought was that it's quite possible that some companies whose business is based on the industrial scale slaughte of sentient beings might not have that much concern for the other sentient beings they exploit, er employ. Especially in the USA. Although, to be fair, many other employers in the field have taken much more stringent measures of care. Another factor is that a very high proportion of employees in the affected factories were immigrants, mainly black. As for the German case: 6000 employees, 3000 tests, 1300 testing positive. Those are phenomenal numbers. Which seem to form a bit of a rebuttal to those who might say "hey, we never actually needed a lockdown/ distancing/ other measures." |
Jun 2020
1:09pm, 22 Jun 2020
35,256 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
From what I've read of the German outbreaks, I think officials need to be much more careful with using the R-number in headlines, because it can be misleading. German has very low number of cases and deaths. This seems to be because of their early high volume testing and targeting lockdown (quarantine) on those testing positive and those they have been in contact with. When there is an outbreak and it spreads rapidly, there is a higher R number. But it's a high R-number with a low starting point of number of cases. Then, because they know about it, through testing and tracing contacts, these cases are then all locked down and R comes straight back down again. We only know what our R-number is mostly in arrears by a week or more, because we have no idea of who has actually got the blooming disease. Our best numbers are our death numbers. By best, I mean most accurate. Our number of cases are a guess and behind reality. It's woeful really. |
Jun 2020
1:16pm, 22 Jun 2020
2,817 posts
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Little Miss Happy
Hoping you get good news USB. EP - the Erin Bromage article contains info about the meat processing plants. |
Jun 2020
1:19pm, 22 Jun 2020
522 posts
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Non-runner
Apparently another factor alongside “R” is how widespread the disease is geographically; the German case seems to be among Roma families who work together in the processing plants, live together in the same tower blocks and generally only socialise with each other, so it should be easier to contain than if the workers came from different families and lived in different parts of the region.
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