Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Farmworkers face coronavirus risk: ‘You can’t pick strawberries over Zoom’

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 137 posts

Re: Farmworkers face coronavirus risk: ‘You can’t pick strawberries over Zoom’

#41

Post by anoonmoose »

tw04 wrote: post #27
sjg007 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These farm workers live in bunk houses basically and are trucked in on school buses. Most of them are migrant laborers or undocumented immigrants. Those conditions are not safe.

There's a big difference between "the job can't be done safely" and "the way the job was done previously wouldn't be safe if they continue doing it that way". There's literally no step in "picking strawberries" that can't be done while maintaining social distancing. It will increase the cost of labor, and force humans to be treated like... humans. But farming isn't inherently unsafe re: coronavirus.

You say "increase the cost of labor" like it's nothing. Fact is, industries like this couldn't be operated on the up and up in the US- people wouldn't buy the product at the price it'd need to be sold for.

I'm not saying this to justify the current conditions, I'm just pointing out that it's this or an eradication of the industry.

edit: an eradication I'm totally fine with.

Re: Farmworkers face coronavirus risk: ‘You can’t pick strawberries over Zoom’

#42

Post by GordonS »

Karunamon wrote: post #35
irrational wrote: post #33

Off-topic, but how did zoom become the Kleenex of video-conferencing apps? I’ve been doing a lot of video-conferencing, but haven’t used zoom. Is it the best one, or is there some other explanation?

Better performance and UI than the others. I work in an environment where I use just about every major video conferencing tool available when working with customers. We use Zoom internally, some customers are on Webex, still others use Hangouts. Webex has been having difficulties ever since the mass exodus to work-from-home. Audio quality especially has been inconsistent over the last few weeks. Hangouts is pretty go…

I use webex multiple times, every day of the week, and audio, video and scree sharing.

Maybe it depends on your timezone, but I honestly haven't noticed any issues at all with webex.

One of my colleagues was complaining about it the other day - I asked if he was connected to the company VPN, and sure enough, he was. Once he disconnected, he said webex was back to normal again.

Like many others, our company has had to quickly buy a lot more VPN licenses, and is finding out it doesn't have the bandwidth to service everyone using the VPN.

Re: Farmworkers face coronavirus risk: ‘You can’t pick strawberries over Zoom’

#43

Post by ng12 »

BrentOzar wrote: post #31
ng12 wrote: post #22

I'm not sure about strawberries but aren't farmworkers in general essential workers? Our food supply and delivery chain is what allows others to stay at home.

> I'm not sure about strawberries but aren't farmworkers in general essential workers? Yes, but that doesn't mean they're immune from the coronavirus risk. The whole point is that they face the coronavirus risk because they're continuing to work.

But some people are going to have to be exposed. Farmworker's exposure helps us flatten the curve.

Re: Farmworkers face coronavirus risk: ‘You can’t pick strawberries over Zoom’

#44

Post by grey-area »

anoonmoose wrote: post #41
tw04 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between "the job can't be done safely" and "the way the job was done previously wouldn't be safe if they continue doing it that way". There's literally no step in "picking strawberries" that can't be done while maintaining social distancing. It will increase the cost of labor, and force humans to be treated like... humans. But farming isn't inherently unsafe re: coronavirus.

You say "increase the cost of labor" like it's nothing. Fact is, industries like this couldn't be operated on the up and up in the US- people wouldn't buy the product at the price it'd need to be sold for. I'm not saying this to justify the current conditions, I'm just pointing out that it's this or an eradication of the industry. edit: an eradication I'm totally fine with.

What price do you think strawberries would be with better conditions? I think the market would support double the price, there would just be lower sales.

Re: Farmworkers face coronavirus risk: ‘You can’t pick strawberries over Zoom’

#45

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

ng12 wrote: post #43
BrentOzar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure about strawberries but aren't farmworkers in general essential workers? Yes, but that doesn't mean they're immune from the coronavirus risk. The whole point is that they face the coronavirus risk because they're continuing to work.

But some people are going to have to be exposed. Farmworker's exposure helps us flatten the curve.

Sure. Except if reports are to be believed coronavirus carrying foods could survive the trip from farm to table and infect people nationwide rapidly.

Re: Farmworkers face coronavirus risk: ‘You can’t pick strawberries over Zoom’

#46

Post by ben7799 »

Karunamon wrote: post #35
irrational wrote: post #33

Off-topic, but how did zoom become the Kleenex of video-conferencing apps? I’ve been doing a lot of video-conferencing, but haven’t used zoom. Is it the best one, or is there some other explanation?

Better performance and UI than the others. I work in an environment where I use just about every major video conferencing tool available when working with customers. We use Zoom internally, some customers are on Webex, still others use Hangouts. Webex has been having difficulties ever since the mass exodus to work-from-home. Audio quality especially has been inconsistent over the last few weeks. Hangouts is pretty go…

Interesting. I've been using Webex, Zoom, and Slack calls.

Webex has been having some issues but has done better the last few days.

Zoom has been OK, but with some audio cutouts yesterday.

The one Hangout I was on the video and audio quality was horrible.

Teams seemed to use tons of video bandwidth, looked good, sounded good, but seemed to use excessive network bandwidth. It's video quality actually seemed excessive for a lot of use cases.

Re: Farmworkers face coronavirus risk: ‘You can’t pick strawberries over Zoom’

#47

Post by ng12 »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #45
ng12 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But some people are going to have to be exposed. Farmworker's exposure helps us flatten the curve.

Sure. Except if reports are to be believed coronavirus carrying foods could survive the trip from farm to table and infect people nationwide rapidly.

If so that'll happen no matter what. Packaged food will be handled by multiple people before it gets into the consumer's hands.

Re: Farmworkers face coronavirus risk: ‘You can’t pick strawberries over Zoom’

#48

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

anoonmoose wrote: post #41
tw04 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between "the job can't be done safely" and "the way the job was done previously wouldn't be safe if they continue doing it that way". There's literally no step in "picking strawberries" that can't be done while maintaining social distancing. It will increase the cost of labor, and force humans to be treated like... humans. But farming isn't inherently unsafe re: coronavirus.

You say "increase the cost of labor" like it's nothing. Fact is, industries like this couldn't be operated on the up and up in the US- people wouldn't buy the product at the price it'd need to be sold for. I'm not saying this to justify the current conditions, I'm just pointing out that it's this or an eradication of the industry. edit: an eradication I'm totally fine with.

If the industry can't survive by following the rules then the leaders of that industry who profited from illicit behaviors should go to prison for decades and their assets should be sold off to pay damages to the effected. The industry can correct itself or die off. If no one wants a product at a humane price then the industry should go extinct in a functioning society.

Re: Farmworkers face coronavirus risk: ‘You can’t pick strawberries over Zoom’

#49

Post by groby_b »

wscott wrote: post #39

Sorry, I am going to be the insensitive sleazeball here. The point of staying at home is not that if you get this disease you are going to die. The issue is that if we ALL get it then a larger proportion of people are going to die because we don't have enough hospitals. We had to choose some people as being important enough that they are allowed to be out and about and use some of that valuable limited healthcare res…

"during this period"?

They're as essential to our survival even if we're not in a pandemic. It's maybe time we recognized that and stopped exploiting labor just because it's unskilled. If we paid them by the value they actually create.

I'd really urge you to reconsider your stance, and be there to help them advocate for fair pay even when this is over.

Re: Farmworkers face coronavirus risk: ‘You can’t pick strawberries over Zoom’

#50

Post by bluGill »

wscott wrote: post #39

Sorry, I am going to be the insensitive sleazeball here. The point of staying at home is not that if you get this disease you are going to die. The issue is that if we ALL get it then a larger proportion of people are going to die because we don't have enough hospitals. We had to choose some people as being important enough that they are allowed to be out and about and use some of that valuable limited healthcare res…

>If this goes south, you may wish that you were one of the people who got the disease early.

Maybe, but the safer bet is that science will discover treatments (and ideally a vaccine) over time and so we are better off being one of the last infected. Let science learn on someone other than me. There are already media reports of both treatments and vaccines - only time will tell which work though.

Yes the Spanish flu happened differently. That is always the risk, but overall I think I prefer to wait.

Post reply on HN