First caveat: Trump’s executive orders have only as much force as the people implementing them. He can claim, for the cameras, that Tyson will be immune from any incidental loss of life related to keeping the KFC supply lines speeding… but if I’m a Tyson corporate lawyer, I’m gonna want to see something more legally binding. Given that…
BREAKING NEWS: Trump executive order will mandate various meat/egg processing plants stay open. Trump had signaled in Oval minutes ago he'd sign an EO today aimed at Tyson Foods's liability. The order, though, will not be limited to Tyson, I'm told.https://t.co/0J6n10JNrD
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) April 28, 2020
He can order them to open but what if no one shows up? Will natl guard operate?
— Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) April 28, 2020
"GET OFF THAT VENTILATOR AND SLICE UP SOME MORE BACON!!!"
— Pé (@4everNeverTrump) April 28, 2020
My guess: This is where the Federalist and various Koch ‘think’ tanks suggest the importation of prison labor. Anyone wanna bet against me on that?
So, chicken and pork are important enough to employ the Defense Production Act to force their continued production, but #covid19 tests, masks, gloves, face shields and other #personalprotectiveequipment are not. And will @POTUS send @OSHA_DOL to protect these workers' lives?
— Seth D. Harris (@MrSethHarris) April 28, 2020
Just last week he said the food supply was in great shape ? pic.twitter.com/ssIgKxOlzE
— snow〽️anomics? (@snowmanomics) April 28, 2020
He can’t let McDonalds close down. https://t.co/8iEkI4t2KJ
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) April 28, 2020
Trump is aggressively using the defense Production Act to keep meatpacking plants open.
Maybe someone should tell him to use the DPA to require massive production of PPE because if there’s not enough PPE for everyone that McDonalds will have to close all its stores nationally.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) April 28, 2020
Can’t fail an inspection when all the inspectors are out sick!
Inspectors are sick and dying pic.twitter.com/cmPpTmirnr
— Lola (@lmnysf) April 28, 2020
And a lot of them are working in those locations bc the companies recruited them to move to isolated towns. The Somalis in Dodge City KS were lured there by the companies in need of labor who wanted a steady workforce. https://t.co/oYD1y6z0ym
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) April 28, 2020
This is a good piece. But one important piece of the story is missing: movement of meat packing from states w strong unions to places like Dodge City, KS. 1980 meat packing was heavily unionized, & a secure working/middle class job. By 2000 unionized plants had almost all closed https://t.co/WdrM1h1FVt
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) April 28, 2020
11) Stated agriculture workers are "essential" and instead of providing them PPE or advocating any additional legal status, worked to allow companies to pay them less. https://t.co/5jsHTuBOJ7
— Todd Schulte (@TheToddSchulte) April 28, 2020
JMG
Wildcat strikes where workers smash the machinery on the way out the door might do wonders. I mean, if you’re told “work and die we don’t care” why should you care what happens?
ArchTeryx
Dead thread redemption repost:
One of the findings is that the virus binds to ACE-2, which is structurally similar to CD146, a T-cell receptor. If it infects T-cells, building memory could be… difficult. It also can have an asymptomatic latent stage, quite unlike most CoV strains if I recall correctly.
If this thing infects and disables immune cells, then we’re in very deep shit, because we WON’T get strong herd immunity. That being said, it’s still early in the research cycle and everyone is burning their candles at both ends, so YMMV.
( And despite training for half my life to research RNA viruses and clinical virology, I’m sitting at home with my thumb up my ass because bioscience is so infested with cronyism and corruption that I, lacking connections, can’t even get a job during a historic pandemic. )
JPL
I haven’t bought Tyson in years, so it might be important to keep track of companies that choose to kill people along with the chickens.
Chip Daniels
And you can rest assured that your Tyson Chicken will be duly sprayed with droplets of sputum and mucus.
JMG
@JPL: Trouble is, they process for a lot of other brands, notably store brands. So unless you can buy Bell & Evans where you live, hard to tell who you’re supporting.
debbie
Trump will divert most of the supply straight to his own belly.
In other pathetic news, DeWine has already capitulated to the assholes and has decided masks shouldn’t be mandatory after all.
Adam L Silverman
chopper
“so, i need y’all to come back to work. we don’t have any masks or any of that shit, but we did cut your pay”
Adam L Silverman
@ArchTeryx: USAJOBS has a section set aside to higher people to deal with COVID-19. Have you give it a look?
Mnemosyne
I had the same question as Rubin: if the problem is that the employees are afraid to come to work and there aren’t enough people to keep up with production, what’s the plan? Round them up and force them into the factories at gunpoint?
Emerald
If they intend to force the workers to work, absent prison labor, then they absolutely will not be approving any $2,000 monthly payments to us peons, as Canada is doing.
Yeah, you probably will go to work and work sick if that’s your only source of income. I think that $1,200 payment is about the last we’re gonna see.
germy
I am confused. I thought it was safe to go back to work? Why does my boss need liability protection?
(LGM reader comment)
germy
hells littlest angel
Imagine a man who wakes up in the morning and asks himself, “How can I be an even shittier human being today than I was yesterday?”
Roger Moore
So, Trump is willing to use the DPA to protect meat production but not healthcare workers or ordinary citizens. We can see exactly where his priorities are.
germy
RSA
@germy: It’s kind of scary, living in a failed state.
catclub
There was a huge immigration raid at meat and chicken processing plants in Mississippi last summer. I wonder if Trump knows about that.
catclub
Essential worker bonus pay. Somehow I doubt it will be available for the non-citizens working at those plants.
oldster
It’s only going to take one instance of meat-to-consumer transmission to create a general boycott of meat in grocery stores.
Worse than that: it’s only going to take a few Facebook rumors of meat-to-consumer transmission.
If the consumers won’t buy it, then the stores won’t carry it. And then the factories will have a lot of dead meat on their hands. Both animal and human.
TS (the original)
@germy:
McConnell wants to deny the aid – this is how he blames the democrats for such a denial.
mali muso
This is when having a close family member who raises chickens on her land is a very good thing. She’s already promised me some of the flock for my freezer. In the meantime, may as well start the plan to phase out meat in our diet.
Snarki, child of Loki
If we just render the MAGAts into Pink Slime, a lot of the Karmavirus problems will be much easier to solve, just saying.
trollhattan
They make up a good portion of wildland firefighters every season so if we’re having a meat emergency….
“Hey, I get to work on the killing floor.”
“No you don’t, I get to.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah!”
And, scene.
kindness
So when these sick factory workers sneeze all over your meat cuts and you get one that isn’t properly cooked does that mean you can get covid-19 for eating such meat?
Questions need answers.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@debbie:
Yup, read that too. I’m pissed. DeWine still has an R after his name. I also think’s too soon to be opening up as well. I’m worried he’s going to piss away all of the sacrifices of this lockdown
Bruuuuce
Force manufacturers to make PPE? Why? The market will cover it (and then we can steal their production and profit from it). But threaten the supply of hamberders? Good grief, no!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@JMG: I imagine if it gets bad it enough it would be “screw this, I an’t dying” and a lot of the work force fleeing. I’ve talked to people who’ve been in failed states like Somalia and the locals are used to packing up and running when things go bad.
Bruuuuce
Also, too, just when you think they REALLY can’t get any worse: Trump says coronavirus bailouts for New York contingent on ending ‘sanctuary’ immigration policies
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@TS (the original): Turtle just wants to deny, that’s all he knows how to do.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
No way the Supreme Court upholds this mandate.
If the government can force a meat plant to stay open then they can force you to eat broccoli.
ArchTeryx
@Adam L Silverman: I have. The obstacle (besides the fact that very few are research positions) is that I’d have to move on no money in the middle of the pandemic. There’s nothing federal in Albany, NY, and nobody pays relocation any more, or helps you with it in any way. That’s a *HUGE* obstacle to someone like me, living on the edge as is.
If they were truly serious, they’d fly me down to New York City, put me in a hotel suite, and stick me in a lab. But nothing about the Trump administration is serious, and the senior scientists running NIH and NIAID are nearly as big a joke as he is (save for the clinical M.D.s)
I was interviewed for a STATE (New York State) DOH position, but the interview was so bad faith it was laughable: The senior investigators were just looking for a fall guy to dig them out of their own COVID-19 test hole and it was blatantly obvious they intended to fire them as soon as they dug them out. A willingness to violate pretty much every PEF civil service guideline was something they didn’t even bother hiding. However, it quickly got rendered moot when the entire state shut down. AFAIK, they didn’t hire anyone before all the hiring managers and lower level paper pushers headed for the hills.
If it wasn’t for the hundreds of thousands of innocents (and not so innocent) that are going to die, my default response would be “You built this rotting house. Burn, baby, burn.” Instead, all I am these days is deeply, deeply depressed and despondent.
trollhattan
@kindness:
I’d be more concerned about norovirus, the virus that keeps me away from cruise lines. (Or any of the myriad foodborne illnesses.)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Trump EO is just more Trump grandstanding anyway; food production is an essential service in every quartinite order I’ve seen. Even in the Blue States like California the meat packing plants are still open. It’s just Trump jerking his meat , if you will, in public to look like he is doing something while the states sort it out, rather than doing something.
Matt McIrvin
ICE detainees.
Matt McIrvin
@kindness: As karmic as it might be, I don’t think that’s a significant concern. E. coli, trichinosis, salmonella, yes. But these viruses don’t thrive on meat, because they’re viruses–they die after a day or two if they can’t infect a host. And cooking would kill them good anyway.
No, the problem here is the staff infecting each other.
Just Chuck
@Snarki, child of Loki: Soylent Orange?
Shana
@Bruuuuce: I love that show.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
I hope when this is all done, all the essential workers in low or minimum wage paying jobs are remembered for just how essential they are and there is a serious reckoning in this country as far as fair compensation.
No more of this “it’s just a job for high school kids, they should learn some new skills, get a real job.”
oatler.
@Bruuuuce: But John’s obnoxious and disliked!
trollhattan
My guess: ‘roid sales are way down.
geg6
My John went this morning to a local meat purveyor who both raises and sells his own (he’s a pig guy, with some chickens) and that of other local farmers. He got big, beautiful, whole boneless, skinless chicken breasts, fresh from local farms and butchered right there. He got 21 of them, which worked to about $1.42 each. We will not run out of chicken any time soon and we know exactly where it came from. Fuck Purdue.
MagdaInBlack
It really is interesting to me how much the “Makers” need the “Takers” to get back to work to MAKE money for the “Makers.” ?
patrick II
It’s a bluff. In the meantime, they take away the worker’s unemployment and if employees don’t think can force change to the work environment through legal threats, they have no other choice if then need employmentto eat or care for their family. They go to work even under dire circumstances. As much as Donald is stupid in some ways, he is mean smart.
It shows the anemic state of the American labor movement that they can run games like this and get away with it.
Ohio Mom
Arch Teryx: Haven’t seen you around these parts in a long time. It’s good to see you again, sorry to hear you’re living on the edge.
Debbie: i am disappointed but not surprised that DeWine is wimping out on masks. When this is all over, people will be downplaying that they ever gave him any props.
I read that in Turkey, every two weeks the government sends every citizen ten masks. I imagine lots of other countries also distribute free masks. Another failing of our government.
i’m thinking it’s time to start stocking up on toilet paper, etc., to be ready when the second virus wave comes through.
Ben Cisco
Chris Hayes has had just about enough of gaslighting, thank you very much. Just told Fucker “Fish Fingers” Carlson to come out of quarantine and go cut up some pork if he thinks it’s safe for OTHER PEOPLE to go out. HA!
Calouste
@trollhattan: I’ve seen a few of those articles about companies defying the lockdown, and they almost never start with the name, and sometimes don’t mention the name at all.
Just name and shame the bastards, clearly and publicly.
Patricia Kayden
Uncle Cosmo
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Just FTR, the Czech Republic is starting to reopen after doing a bang-up job containing the virus. A central element to their strategy was to require everyone who ventured out to wear a mask. Everyone. No excuses, no exceptions.
Baud
@Patricia Kayden:
I would have bet real money that someone named Chaz Bono was a Trump supporter.
You just never know….
laura
My dad, my grandpa and about 5 of my dad’s tightest friends were butchers and meat cutters. Grandpa Tom and a couple of his brothers were dust bowl okies who moved to northern california and helped unionize the workers. Dad apprenticed at packers and canners just north of Santa Rosa and he did tons of side work field dressing and butchering for much of my childhood years. Good Union jobs. Closed shops – no freeriding scabs allowed. Benefits, pension, on the job safety because this is hard, dangerous work (I’m sitting here in my wedding ring that’s mostly from dad’s ring – he couldn’t wear it because it can get caught on a knife a bone a saw…). As a Union butcher and meat cutter back before the industry concentrated and moved out of state and busted unions, my dad would go into the delivery trucks and personally inspect carcasses that had previously been inspected by the USDA as identified by the stamps on said carcasses. If, for any reason, he or any other receiving butcher rejected a carcass as not fit, it was not brought off the truck. That’s your health and safety right there. Fitness, not profit dictated whether you could eventually purchase a meat item. And the meat case was pulled before the last butcher went home. No meat sales when no meat cutters were on duty.
All this changed in the late 70’s and by the Reagan administration, loads of meat came to the store in large primal cuts of multiple animals in cryovac bags. Meat from all over the world mixed with meat from all over the world with no identifying markers other than numbers in the tens of thousands. Anyone here remember the first big e coli outbreak that killed lots of people and children? I do. It happened after the industrialization and decentralization and non-unionization of our meat supply. I have, and my dad had, nothing but respect for the people who do this work, and the conditions that they are working under are both increasing dangerous and increasingly difficult as the speeding up of the processing (think Lucy and Ethel in the candy factory). Immigrant workers are willing to do this in order to come to this country. They deserve our respect and they damn sure deserve better working conditions and a big increase in wages to live in decent housing and they deserve to have the right to join a Union. This issue is and will always be dear to me. And I have the gift of remembering the past. It does not have to be this way!
Jackie
@patrick II: Tyson’s – at least the one in Wallula, WA is closed AND paying their employees. I was happily surprised to learn this.
Mart
@Matt McIrvin:
“ICE detainees.”
The plan is to take them back to where ICE found them. Steven Miller is sad.
Always liked Thomas Hartman’s line if we were serious about stopping undocumented workers the CEO of Cargill would be handcuffed and frog marched. Actually applies to Trump as well.
Brachiator
Prisons. Another place subject to serious pandemic outbreaks.
Every moron who ever wished for a president who would run the country like a business is getting the business all right, hard and rough.
Patricia Kayden
@Chip Daniels: That’s what I assume too. Sick workers aren’t good workers. They’ll contaminate the meat as they are forced to work without protective equipment.
joel hanes
It was my understanding that invoking the DPA required the government to contract to purchase the production compelled under the act at a price fixed in the contract.
hueyplong
Whenever Trump is at a low point, as he was late last week when he was subjected to ridicule, the way they get him to snap out of it is to let him do something really sadistic.
Hence today.
The details of these reopening seem so weird. They’re going to get people back at a time and in a manner that pretty much no real scientist/doctor thinks is designed to result in a lower body count of the type you assume Trump would like to boast about. Based on what we know, it is more likely than not that what Georgia and others are doing is going to go wrong.
Who puts forth a plan with a much less than 50% chance of success when plans with better odds are available? It’s like they’ve never truly let go of the “hoax” theory.
Or they just don’t care how many people die. Maybe we really underestimated the extent to which the crowd at that 2016 South Carolina primary debate represented the heart and [substitute something for “soul”] of the Republican party.
WestTexan70
Once again, this 60-year-old former ranch hand from West Texas is really, really glad he became a vegetarian in 1987.
joel hanes
@kindness:
does that mean you can get covid-19 for eating such meat?
Probably not. The virus survives only for hours to a couple days on most surfaces. Hard surfaces such as stainless steel seem to be the worst in experiments.
And if the surface of your chicken or pork doesn’t reach virus-killing temperatures during cooking, most of it will still be raw.
I’ve never heard of a known case of food-borne transmission. Best to worry about other things, like inhaling airborne droplets from someone unmasked and too close, which is apparently the route for most SARS-CoV-2 infections.
Patricia Kayden
Doug R
15% of Alberta’s covid cases come from one beef processing plant just south of Calgary. That and another plant north of Calgary together handle roughly 80% of beef processed in Canada.
BC had another 55 cases reported today, 39 came from one chicken processing plant.
planetjanet
I did not realize there was a primary in Ohio today. It was mostly vote by mail, but they are reporting results. Biden is up 75%, Sanders 15.7% with 25% of precincts reporting.
MomSense
Isn’t Tyson the company that was involved in some kind of immigrant smuggling plan? I also think the chicken industry was caught in some kind of coordinated immigrant wage suppression scheme.
This seems to be an industry that doesn’t care about its workers in good times.
I can not describe how disgusted and furious I am about what is happening to our country.
Gravenstone
@germy:
May not go along? They should kick him in the fucking nuts each and every time he croaks out the suggestion that he will poison the relief bill with “liability” protection.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@planetjanet: How can Bernie only be at 15% when his
cultcrowds were so big!Ruckus
@Emerald:
What’s the old adage? Don’t count your chickens till they hatch?
For sure there will be another round of grifting rewards for the mucky mucks but us working shits? Ya I agree with you, this is the sum total of what we can expect, other than a letter, like the one I got from shit for brains telling me that my $1200 deposit was made.
Doug R
@ArchTeryx: Have you tried Canada?
laura
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: I hope when this is all done, all the essential workers in low or minimum wage paying jobs are remembered for just how essential they are and there is a serious reckoning in this country as far as fair compensation.
I can’t upvote this enough. All work should be respected and it should pay at least enough to meet one’s needs.
mrmoshpotato
Fuck this loser-of-the-popular-vote, bastard administration.
Need I say more?
Origuy
There’s a special election in MD-07 today to fill Elijah Cummings’ seat in the house. The Democrat, who is projected to win, Kweisi Mufune, who held the seat before Cummings. The Republican is an African-American woman, Kimberly Klacik, who is an avowed Trumpist.
MisterForkbeard
@planetjanet: At this point Sanders should be happy he’s off the NY primary. Yeesh.
Omnes Omnibus
In my more positive moments, I wonder if this administration and this pandemic will be the things that cause the USA to make the sort of changes that European counties were able to make in the wake of WWII.
Another Scott
@Origuy: Mfume already won. ;-)
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/495116-democrat-kweisi-mfume-wins-special-election-to-replace-cummings
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s been Biden’s message, basically. We’ll see how well it sells.
tokyokie
@Matt McIrvin:
Salmonella and E. coli are bacteria, and trichinosis is caused by roundworms. None of those diseases are caused by viruses. However, cooking meats thoroughly should kill any bacteria or viruses those meats contain.
planetjanet
@MisterForkbeard: The sweetest thing is he has zero delegates so far.
LongHairedWeirdo
Just to make things clear: if meatpacking was essential (and it could be argued that it is), in any rational country, there’d be regulations that were a safe harbor. They’d give you PPE for use every shift, with replacement at each break, they’d have washing stations, and they’d have to have an actual video, showing you smoking a quick one, rather than “using the wash-up stations”, to give you grief over being out of position. Of course, they could gig you for a 15 second (not 20!) handwash… but let’s be honest, they won’t.
Then, with all those regulations in place, and huge fines for violators, *only then* would they say “… and the companies that follow these rules religiously will be immune to lawsuits – though we’ll be performing daily spot inspections, and one failed inspection means you close up for a day (and send your non-cleaning employees home with credit for the full shift), or you lose the lawsuit waiver.”
And I explain this, because we live in a world where people will write a news story, without pointing out how insanely, hideously, evil this notion is. They’ll explain that the Republicans want to protect businesses from lawsuits, and Democrats don’t – BOTH SIDES! – while not pointing out that, “of course, governments don’t normally risk the lives of their citizenry, to enrich fat cats, and prevent a rise in the price of hambergers[sic]…”
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus:
Going from not fighting the Nazis to kicking Nazi ass?
laura
@tokyokie: trichinosis has largely been eliminated from the food supply. E coli and listeria can only adhere to a meat’s surface and so easily killed by the cooking process. However, regarding e coli, ground meat can/does redistribute the bacteria into the interior as there is no “surface” in ground meat. Fun fact, preformed patties can be problematic. My only experience with e coli involved eating a cheese burger on Bainbridge Island in the summer of 2000. I didn’t eat ground beef for about 5 years and since, only from a local specialty market with an open meat case and mostly locally sourced providers. It is a luxury- one I easily will concede. But I’m willing to pay up to my confidence level for the occasions I eat meat.
Eunicecycle
@planetjanet: The primary was supposed to be March 17, but was postponed at the last minute and converted to a vote by mail election. By the time my husband and I received our ballots Bernie had dropped out. We were both going to vote for Warren, but both of us ended up voting for Joe. I think a lot of people probably did the same.
glory b
@geg6: This is in SW PA?
schrodingers_cat
@ArchTeryx: Are you in Massachusetts? or NY? Because MA is hiring contact tracers the second and third tier need specialized backgrounds in medicine/virology etc.
planetjanet
@Eunicecycle: What percent of the vote does Sanders need to get delegates? I thought in most places it was 15%.
schrodingers_cat
Lawyers of Balloon Juice what is the process of getting an organization designated as a hate group by the FBI and the State Department.
Thanks.
Just Chuck
@Mart: Maybe they could post a sign over the work camp that says “Work Will Make You Free”
Ruckus
@hells littlest angel:
We of course do not need to imagine. Our finest citizens voted for shit for brains, whose sum total of abilities is to find ways to be shittier day after day. And he hired help to read and subvert federal law so that he could be even shittier.
Eunicecycle
@planetjanet: I thought the same, but so far it is showing Sanders with 15.2% and no delegates. The delegate distribution is so bizarre I am not sure if you are guaranteed delegates or not.
Mike in NC
Well, Fat Bastard can’t get through a day without half a dozen burned hamberders.
Subsole
@hueyplong: Here in TX, it’s pretty transparently about kicking people off their unemployment.
Also, like 85% of the state budget comes from sales tax. So they deffo want all of us happy little patriot-customers out buybuybuying.
Now, what happens when we get another outbreak with another panic and another economic falloff? Nothing good.
But, if they could think past the tip of their plumbing they wouldn’t be GOP.
geg6
@glory b:
Just over the line in Ohio. East Palestine, to be exact. The butcher, I mean. I’m still here in Beaver County.
Eunicecycle
And I see Mike DeWine did a half flip off the high board and partly reversed himself AGAIN, now saying employees in businesses have to wear masks but not customers. He has really mucked this up by being such a pushover.
Viva BrisVegas
@schrodingers_cat:
I ain’t no lawyer, but I imagine a good place to start would be to talk to the folks at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: Barr’s DOJ? Hmmm… :-(
Have you checked https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
geg6
@Eunicecycle:
Damn, I was so hoping for at least a trio of sane Republican governors. We need two parties in this country and the current GOP must die. Looks like it’s all up to Baker and Hogan. Unless, of course, they fold, too.
schrodingers_cat
@Viva BrisVegas:
@Another Scott: Yes I have checked and the Sangh (and their American offshoot) is not on their radar.
United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has designated India as a country of special concern where the religious freedoms of the minorities are under attack.
jayjaybear
@Baud: I can’t tell if this was ironic or not, but Chaz Bono is Cher’s son, and a trans man. That’s at least two factors pointing to anti-Trumpism.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@ArchTeryx: UCSF is still hiring and sometimes pays at least part of relocation costs.
Glad to see you back here. I hope you are able to find something very soon, and equally important, that you’re able to find some security and peace of mind.
-Colette, married to a virology research lab administrator
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
I’m aggravated that he let the special interest groups get to him.
glory b
@geg6: Oh, okay.
I’m still here in Pittsburgh, working from home, no more traveling for the time being.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: Ok.
https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/get-help-now
HTH a little. Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Been a lot of hand wringing about that in the finical articles about how the horrors socialism are about to ravage to the country. There is that deer caught in the headlights vibe about from the Right since this Virus has pretty much crapped on their ideology.
Duane
@Eunicecycle: Gov. Dewine mention where to get the needed masks? They’re kind of scarce. When you find them it’s six bucks a piece and limited quantity. If there’s a secret stash of millions of masks, time to break them out. The barrels of disinfectant, too.
rikyrah
@mali muso:
Like I said…we might become involuntary vegetarians
tokyokie
@laura: I’m aware that trichinosis has largely been eliminated from the domestic pork supply. Still, thorough cooking will raise the temperature to a level that will destroy the cysts that contain the roundworm. I know E. coli remains a problem with ground beef; my niece got a nasty case of it, had to undergo a bowel resection, and she still won’t eat ground beef, and remains generally leery of beef. Still, if the burger is cooked to at least medium — no red or pink meat — then the internal temperature should have reached a level at which the bacteria cannot survive.
Eunicecycle
@Duane: I would think businesses should have to provide them for their employees; they are usually required to give employees whatever safety equipment they need. As far as customers, you’re on your own, I guess. And yeah, good luck finding hand sanitizer!
Uncle Cosmo
@Origuy: Governor Hogan moved the primary election that was supposed to happen today to sometime in June; the only election today in MD was the MD-07 “general election” to fill Cummings’ seat, which was mail-in only. I heard they’d sent out the ballots at the beginning of April & was getting a bit nervous when I didn’t get one, but it finally showed up on the 13th & I mailed it back the next day. Mfume should cruise to victory. The weird thing is that he has to run again in June in the Democratic primary for next term, with the same ~20 other candidates on the ballot (including Cummings’ widow).
Krope, the Formerly Dope
His father was a Republican Congressman, though.
Some Fox nitwit (Waters I think) was going on the other night about how this is exactly what the green new deal and other socialist plans wanted for America. I can’t even imagine how people still take this shit seriously.
But then I find myself thinking things like “Ok, your rapture is here, you happy?”
I hope I’m not as off the mark as they are.
Another Scott
@Eunicecycle: Don’t be so sure that they have to provide PPE. The government doesn’t for many of its employees.
https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2020/04/va-instructs-coronavirus-exposed-staff-continue-working-places-those-who-dont-awol-status/164693/ (from April 17):
Cheers,
Scott.
Bill Arnold
@Eunicecycle:
Has it been made clear to him that a significant subset of the population customer set will not go into stores without an enforced masked-customers-only policy? That they know that The Unmasked are a mortal threat to them, personally?