Prof Gina Neff

Top 10 Coronavirus clusters in the US? Prisons, meat packing plants, a Navy battleship. Next 10? Prisons, meat packing plants, nursing homes. Next 10? And the 10 after that? Prisons, meat packing plants and nursing homes.... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html#clusters …

That Biogen conference in Boston? 88th on the list (and an outlier). Cruises? Diamond Princess is 99th on the list. Remember: prisons, meat packing plants and nursing homes.

One meat packing plant in South Dakota ALONE is responsible for more than 1,000 Coronavirus cases in the US.

What should horrify everyone about this story is that the first man to die in the Sioux Falls supercluster kept going to work even though he had symptoms of coronavirus. Why?

The Smithfield "plant also offered a $500 "responsibility bonus" to workers who DIDN'T MISS A SHIFT in the month of April." The LAST thing you want in a global pandemic is employers paying their workers to come in sick. That is IRRESPONSIBILITY pay.

Smithfield, typical & cynical, sold it as corporate social responsiblity. Before grad school, I worked as a union organizer with the @UFCW at a Smithfield plant in North Carolina, a horror story of cruelty & absolute control: The line didn't stop even when ammonia gas leaked.

The line didn't stop for coronavirus at Smithfield even though they were supposed to shut it down for cleaning. Or JBS in Green Bay, Wisconsin (348 cases) Or JBS in Greeley, Colorado (245 ) Or JBS in Grand Island, Nebraska (230 ) Or American Foods in Green Bay (197)

The US coronavirus superclusters are in WORKPLACES where people very have little say in how to do their work, and often no paid sick leave. The work is hard, difficult and sometimes soul crushing and dangerous. The work environments treat workers as disposable.

Superclusters in the US are in prisons, meat packing plants and nursing homes. They all have are low-paid jobs. But in many places (like my Kentucky hometown) they can be a community's most reliable source of work. For many people, these jobs are the best among their options.

At the first worst cluster in the US, a nursing home outside of Seattle, staff 1) worked while symptomatic 2) worked in more than one facility 3) did not have safety training/ adherence 4) had "inadequate supplies of PPE and other items (e.g., alcohol-based hand sanitizer)"

We ALL pay for these workplace decisions.

For everyone to be safe, we must protect everyone. That's the story to fight this virus. You might not like it. For everyone to be safe, we must protect everyone. Not just rich. Or citizens. Or white people. Or voters. Or the able bodied. Or the young. Or people who can wfh.

Protect everyone means adequate (PPE) for our frontline workers. Protect everyone means the whistleblowers who call out unsafe working conditions. Protect everyone means everyone who is sick can stay home. And paying them to. Protect everyone means criminals, elderly, immigrants.

We absolutely have to improve conditions in prisons, nursing homes and meat packing plants to before we can return to "normal." Otherwise, we are going to have tragic recurrences of clusters of coronavirus cases.

Singapore is a cautionary tale: proactive government interventions worked against coronavirus, but the conditions for migrant workers in the country led to new clusters of outbreaks. The lesson: you can't beat this virus without taking care of your most vulnerable workers.

You can't beat this virus without taking care of the most vulnerable PEOPLE in society. That's the tragic lesson coming out of the US. And the UK.

You can't beat this virus without addressing the potential differential impact of coronavirus on racial and ethnic minorities. We need more evidence, but early indications are terrifying. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30922-3/fulltext?utm_campaign=tlcoronavirus20&utm_content=127040366&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-27013292 …

Be careful, though. There is an innocent-looking but insidious story emerging. One that says us versus them. That story says "this is a global disease, so keep our borders shut, pull back on international travel (and cooperation)" That story has already started being told.

There is another story that the people who are getting sick are somehow not doing things the "right" way, unlike those of us with the privilege to work from home. That's a very dangerous story.