After first being spared, rural California now being ravaged by the coronavirus

[Zorro]

It was once said that California’s coronavirus pandemic was hitting dense urban areas the hardest.

Now, it’s rural, agricultural areas that are among the most severely affected.

“The epidemic is moving from urban Latino populations to rural Latino populations,” Dr. George Rutherford, epidemiologist and infectious-diseases expert at UC San Francisco, said Wednesday. The risk factors are the same: low-income essential workers who live in crowded housing and must leave home to work and earn money and who may be less likely to speak up to call attention to problematic workplace safety conditions.

Earlier in the pandemic, Los Angeles County was one of the hot spots for new infections. By June, it was Imperial County. The rural, agricultural and impoverished county east of San Diego soared up the list as California’s hardest hit county, in terms of new cases per 100,000 residents over the past two weeks. Imperial County hit its worst number on June 16, when there were 1,438 cases per 100,000 residents over the previous two weeks.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-07/after-first-being-spared-rural-california-now-being-ravaged-by-the-coronavirus

I'm wondering what the effect will be on produce prices with this increase in Covid cases in one of the primary agricultural centers of the country. I suspect it won't be good.

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Scary.

The folks whom have the least the least among us. Sounding like the Central Valley is about to go on lock down. And Wine Grape Harvest is about to begin.

So all those Hoity toity folks are going to be inconvenienced. No free bee Wine thingees this year.

[Bayard]

2. Fresno County

And the San Joaquin Valley can't be far behind.

[SWBTATTReg]

3. Same thing is happening in rural areas across the Country, where there are meat packing plants,

Tyson chicken / turkey processing plants, etc., everywhere where there are processing plants. My sister started freaking out in SW Missouri (where there are all kinds of chicken/turkey etc. processing plants) months ago and they started wearing masks etc. quite a ways back. Thing is, they could only trace 1/2 of the cases to the processing plants, they still didn't understand how the other 1/2 of the CV cases got started up.

And to if and will prices be higher? Yes. To ensure that our food supply is safe? Yes. Will every company engage in furthering practices that actually encourage food and worker safety? NO, of course not.

Hopefully the marketplace will punish these slackers for not providing safety for their food products or their workers. This is one big reason why I don't support efforts by the Senate republicans to protect producers so they can't get sued.

The rationale is if producers can't get sued, they won't engage in safer practices, let the marketplace do this, NOT the Senate thugs who are pushing for this lawsuit protection amendment, which will hurt consumers far more than it is worth. Where is the free marketplace that you thugs are always espousing/pushing for? The republican senators and house members are the ultimate hypocrites in that they believe in the free marketplace, but then try to put in place mechanisms in place that prevent a totally free marketplace from working, by preventing lawsuits that punish those producers that fail to protect consumers and workers.

[bluestarone]

4. Not from Cal. BUT i bet it has a lot to do

With ASSHOLES that refuse to wear masks! Seen a lot of it on TV.