Rush Limbaugh discussed a column by Sarah Hoyt offering a theory why the COVID-19 virus erupted in some places, but not others. It’s all about the culture.
Of course, Americans have been endlessly lectured that all cultures are equally valid; therefore, new arrivals to our country have no obligation to assimilate to our way of doing things. That makes me wonder about virus hot spots in America. There are virus outbreaks at pork processing plants in Worthington, Minnesota, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. They are “hot spots” in states with otherwise low case levels. Why there?
Dig deep into the reporting and discover the links. “Walz suggested the outbreak may have spread from Sioux Falls to Worthington, noting many plant workers are employed by both JBS and Smithfield. “There’s also a lot
of family members that work in both plants,” he said. JBS employs more than 2,000 people in Worthington, drawing a diverse workforce of immigrants and refugees from East Africa, Asia, Mexico and Central America.”
Question: do immigrants/refugees have the same tendency to obey the government’s hand-washing and social distancing orders as the German and Norwegian settlers around them? Or do recent immigrants/refugees tend to ignore the government in favor of continuing their own cultural hygiene practices, which may be different from the recommended practices?
Is diversity still our strength, or has it become our Achilles heel?
Joe Doakes
While Joe may have a point, I suspect it’s more physical than cultural.
I’ve been referring people to a couple of CDC articles about studies in Hong Kong and South Korea, where it appears the virus spreads through droplets carried by air currents through densely packed places – like restaurants, buses and trains, tightly-packed open plan offices – and, I suspect, places like meat processing plants with lots of forced air ventilation, especially plants where workers weren’t taking precautions like wearing the masks that, it seems reasonable, might prevent droplets from being sneezed out.
Are there cultural issues? Sure. Mobility appears to be a big one, as well – whether between Sioux Falls and Worthington or between Wuhan and Las Vegas…
…provided conditions are right to see to the spread of the virus once the people are in the same room.
Funny that food shortages is now a big concern and of course, another scare tactic of the utterly contemptible Democrats and their propaganda media jackals. This morning, they had a hog farmer from Northfield who reached out to the community asking them to buy some of them. Although he sold over 3,500 of them, he still may have to destroy over 5000 hogs, because the big processors are closed and he has nowhere to send them. The GOP in the Minnesota legislature, are going to push to ease restrictions on smaller processors to help with the backlog. Apparently that meat can’t be sold outside of the state. My brother and I used to buy a hog, a steer, 50-60 chickens and 40 dozen eggs every year from one of those family farms that processes their meat. Obviously, we picked up the chickens and eggs as they were available. This kept us stocked for almost the whole year, depending on how many family barbecues we had over the summer. Maybe it’s time to do that again. If you’ve never had bacon that is cured and smoked the old fashioned way, with no nitrites, you’re missing out.
While that is true, there is also another factor.. A lot of the workers families live in the Twin Cities and the employees share crowded apartment during their workweek. So you get the contamination and virus transport from the inner-cities, then it gets spread in the plant and crowded living arrangements.
Agreed, Greg. I read somewhere in the last week or two about someone who used to live in Worthington in an apartment alone. The neighbors were from Ecuador or something and in an identical apartment to hers there were eight. The residents were not described (family or unrelated workers), the room count of the apartment was not mentioned, and I don’t have a link, so YMMV.
Decades ago, when the Boat People first arrived in St. Paul, a buddy was starting his own business as licensed electrician. He needed a part-time apprentice to fetch tools, pull wires, etc. He got the bid to install smoke detectors in a couple of big old apartment buildings in Rondo and I went along to help. One family name was on the lease to each apartment, but “family” is a flexible term – it’s different in their culture, more inclusive, pretty much the whole clan.
Every apartment was wall-to-wall mattresses. Every apartment had two rice cookers on the counter, a 50-pound sack on the floor, and an apartment sized chest freezer full of odd cuts (yes, I peeked). And they were thrilled to be there. Indoor plumbing. Running water. Cheap, plentiful food. No soldiers pointing rifles with fixed bayonets. No mass graves.
If one person in that building caught COVID, I’m sure the entire building would have had it within hours. And they’d still have been grateful that only Grandpa died. Because for the rest of them, no bayonets. Life here is WONDERFUL.
It’s no surprise the rest of the world is willing to walk a thousand miles to get here, or paddle through shark-infested waters, or hide in shipping containers. The surprise is the rest of us, meekly cowering in place, afraid of a virus that has killed fewer people in all of 2020 than we aborted last month.
Before my wife retired, I always got dragged along to the annual company Christmas party. It was just one of those things, sitting at a table with people who all know each other – but don’t know you.
So last year, I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me.
“What do you do?”
I told her, I spent 30 years in law enforcement as an IT guy.
“And what do you do?” I asked.
She said that she was a teacher.
Then out of the blue, she confessed that she doesn’t let her children play outside.
“Why not?”
“Because we live too close to the freeway.”
“So?”
“Well,” she said, “people can come off the freeway, grab your kids and be gone just like that.”
Two other young couples at our table began nodding their heads approvingly.
With people that risk adverse in the world, we will be shutdown forever.
“Gosh,” I told the table, “I used to hop freight trains in third grade.”
Greg, it is similarly interesting to discuss how many children are offered and take a school bus from areas that are only a few blocks from their house. For safety… or what I’ve noticed in the past few years, how many children wait for their school bus with mom at the end of driveway in the family car.