Coronavirus Clusters Grow Rapidly In Three Western Kansas Meatpacking Counties

[TexasTowelie]

GARDEN CITY, Kansas — Two western Kansas counties that are home to meatpacking plants have some of the highest counts of the coronavirus in the state. It’s a distinction that comes as the Tyson plant near Garden City said this week it has several cases among its workers.

None of the meatpacking plants, which make up about 25% of the national beef supply according to a Kansas State professor’s estimate, has shared a specific count of workers with a COVID-19 diagnosis. And the state health department leaves it up to county health departments to decide whether to provide the public with detailed case information.

In the span of 11 days, Ford County, where there is a National Beef and a Cargill plant in Dodge City, has gone from 16 cases to 288. Seward County, which has a National Beef plant in Liberal, went from six to 125. Finney County, where the Tyson plant is located, is up from 17 to 87.

Several meatpacking plants around the country, from South Dakota to Iowa to Colorado, have had to shut down temporarily over the past few weeks due to the number of workers coming down with the coronavirus. But so far, Kansas’ major meatpacking plants have not fully shut down, though the National Beef plant in Dodge City did close for a few days for deep cleaning.

Read more: https://www.hppr.org/post/coronavirus-clusters-grow-rapidly-three-western-kansas-meatpacking-counties

[SWBTATTReg]

1. So far, I've read about cases in MN, South Dakota, and now KS. Just how messy are these ...

meatpacking plants? I think I'll avoid any processed meats, etc. for a while, being that the processing going on sounds rather unsafe. Just how unsafe are the products coming out of any meat packing plant?

And, most of these cases are happening in rural areas where there are few if any medical facilities able to handle a serious influx of CV cases. Again, the lack of medical facilities (similar to what's happened in MO too, w/ the shutdown of smaller, for profit, medical centers across the state of MO, something like 10 or 11 small centers, to cut costs etc.) is going to hurt people, because the powers that be (in republican controlled states from what I'm reading) allowed profit to rule vs. lives.

Just like Steven Moore advocates. Yes, I'm talking about that 'Steven Moore' who advocates to go ahead and let people get sick, accept the losses, yeah, sure, we'll have a certain percentage of the population die, but good golly, we'll save the economy 'Steven Moore'!

This is the idiot that was nominated for a Fed. Reserve seat, was smart enough to see that he wasn't going to be approved by the republican controlled Senate...pretty bad, reputation when the republican controlled Senate can't vouch for you, eh?

Isn't our system of capitalism working just great?! You would think that being in a booming economy for over 11 years or so, that the system of capitalism would have held up a lot better, would have stockpiled reserves in case of a rainy day, but it sure didn't. All of the tax cuts over the years, all of the cuddling provided by republican representatives and / or Senate republicans didn't provide a single penny of resilience, sustainable strength or ability to our so called 'vaunted economy' to withstand a major downturn.

Pathetic. Despite spending over 2.2 trillion dollars. Despite another aid package valued almost 500 billion dollars, our system of capitalism is still shaking in its boots, ready to collapse, at a moment's notice. Thank god for socialism, eh?

Next time I have a stock market guru, or an economist or an finance/banking person try to tell me the advantages of a capitalistic society, I'll tell them to go take a flying leap, especially after the recent massive socialist support payments that the vaunted capitalist system had to receive, in order to survive.

Remember this. The republicans' vaunted smarts on national security issues, overseas relationships with our former allies, economic/business capitalism, and 'small or no government is the best!' concepts has been all shot to hell. Without any serious issues that these people can stand behind (since they've all collapsed) what in the hell do republicans stand for now?

Idiots. Every one of them.

[TexasTowelie]

2. FYI, they have also closed a Tyson plant in Iowa.

I'm not going to lay the blame on capitalism since they would have to close the facilities under a socialist economy as well. There wouldn't have been any larger stockpiles of equipment in a socialist system than under a capitalist system. There simply is no reason to maintain large equipment stockpiles that cost money, occupy space, and require tracking so that the supplies are replenished after they pass their expiration dates.

Was the Trump administrative ineffective with their planning? Yes. The warning signs were out there and they should be at least two months farther ahead than they are.

Should huge bailouts of businesses occur? Sometimes, but that would be necessary whether we were under a capitalist, socialist, or communist economy. However, that assistance should only go to the businesses that truly need it in order to survive while other businesses that have the financial assets should fend for themselves.

[Maxheader]

3. Yeah it's fuckin real bad..

In a state with fewer residents than some large cities..how the hell did we let it

get away from us?


https://www.kansas.com/news/coronavirus/article242291046.html