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

latimes.com

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

#71

Post by mattmanser »

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…

That's clearly not the strategy any more. I mean, I was just as wrong as I was saying the same thing a week ago. But the numbers don't add up.

You can't have 100,000-200,000 deaths in a country of 327 million people if it infects 80% and has a mortality rate of 1-2% if you have medical intervention (which is their best guess).

Without intervention I assume it kills the up to 20% (probably more like 10% as we're still not clear on asymptomatic infections) who require hospitalisation.

For the US that's 2.6-5.2 million dead to reach herd immunity with a shallow peak, or something like 25-50 million if its not flattened and the health service get overwhelmed.

By saying only 100,000-200,000 will die, the strategy must ultimately be lockdown to stop spread, then release the lockdown and contain the infections using test, trace, quarantine like S.Korea, China and Japan. Or lockdown until a vaccine is ready in 18 months, which I can't see happening.

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

#72

Post by lotsofpulp »

groby_b wrote: post #60
lotsofpulp wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would the value they create or "fair pay" be measured?

"fair pay" -> well, let's start with "treated like human beings, not chattel", "afforded basic hygiene & health measures", "kept safe in a crisis". From there, we get to "would you die without them? If yes, maybe they're underpaid. Maybe $18K a year just isn't fair pay under any circumstances, not if we can't force people via a "well, you could always die" clause. As for the value they create - you have food availabl…

If I were a business owner trying to figure out how much to pay, I would not be able to deduce the numerical figure from your comment.

I understand what you're saying, my intention is to display how easy it is to say, but how difficult it is to execute. Currently, we pay people what it costs to replace them, but it would be nice if we could snap our fingers and give everyone a global standard of living equal to whatever the top 5% live in. Unfortunately, that's not possible, and short of a country wide or world wide effort to implement some type of UBI, I don't see much chance of success.

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

#73

Post by munk-a »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #58

You can't pick strawberries over zoom, but it's pretty easy to distance yourself from others on a farm. And let's face it, if you have the physical fortitude for farm work, you aren't at risk from coronavirus.

> you aren't at risk from coronavirus

We don't have sufficient information to determine this definitively - some of the folks that have "recovered" have had serious respiratory complications.

Also, just because the farm worker is alright is their mother fine too? What about the rest of their family? Are they going to be treated in a wonderful modern hospital or is a doctor going to send them home to be cared for by their family?

If they don't have insurance any medical costs they take own will come completely out of their own pocket.

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

#74

Post by ng12 »

groby_b wrote: post #65
ng12 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying we shouldn't take all precautions we can. I'm saying it's necessary work and some exposure needs to happen.

No, some exposure does not need to happen. You could bring in the harvest just fine without exposure. We're choosing not to, because it'd cost precious money, and that's the god we'd like to worship. With the exact same kind of logic you use, one could also argue that it's not necessary work. Some starving just needs to happen. No? Not good logic? Then explain to me why your life matters more than farm worker lives?

Zero exposure for someone working on a farm is utterly unrealistic.

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

#75

Post by [deleted] »

missedthecue wrote: post #66
lotsofpulp wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would the value they create or "fair pay" be measured?

Things like "fair pay" and "living wage" are political talking points. In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or economics, but morality. Its advocates refuse to come to terms with the fact that wages are market price–determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of oil, steel, corn, or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader polit…

[deleted]

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

#76

Post by lotsofpulp »

missedthecue wrote: post #66
lotsofpulp wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would the value they create or "fair pay" be measured?

Things like "fair pay" and "living wage" are political talking points. In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or economics, but morality. Its advocates refuse to come to terms with the fact that wages are market price–determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of oil, steel, corn, or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader polit…

I think the doom to failure part is due to a scarcity of resources (especially an environment to pollute), which inherently causes distribution issues.

If the world had an infinite number of detached single family homes in places with fresh water and secure food supplies and good weather, making things "fair" would be quite easy. We can certainly do better than we currently are, but the underlying reason things aren't fair is that nature doesn't offer fair.

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

#77

Post by amelius »

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?

Isn't video-conferencing a commodity by now, given that we have Web-RTC implementations for a while now?

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

#78

Post by bilbo0s »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #54
groby_b wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

How would the value they create or "fair pay" be measured?

>How would the value they create [...] be measured?

Even if it could, that value would be so enormous that there are simple economic constraints on what's possible in terms of remuneration. Lot's of people are allocated what are probably criminally small portions of the value they create.

For instance, if the sanitation engineers in a city disappeared, you wouldn't want to be in that city 3 months later. The city's streets would be filled with rotting garbage, and that would be the least of it's problems. Its grey- and black- water processing systems would be long since collapsed. And that city'd better hope that no industrial actors took the opportunity to dispense of troublesome pollutants despite the lack of a functioning sanitation system.

The thing is, despite the critical importance of the guys running our sanitation systems, and the enormous value the environment they maintain confers on us, in my own city, not one of them makes USD300 grand a year. (Or even USD200 grand. You get the idea.) A lot of civilization collapses without them, but they are still some of the lowest paid professionals in all of engineering.

All that's due to the same economic limitations that constrict remuneration for farmworkers. They are absolutely essential. They create enormous value. Unfortunately, the way the system is set up, there is not much in the way of resources to reward them.

We can discuss changing the system, but I doubt most people would like the outcome of that exercise. That would definitely go under "Be careful what you wish for."

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

#79

Post by delfinom »

munk-a wrote: post #64
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…

Who gets to choose who gets sick first - do remember that in the US a farm worker getting sick might bankrupt them and kill them not because a hospital bed isn't available - but because they can't afford it or end up having a heart attack after dealing with the stress of those costs. Additionally Covid-19 isn't super fatal, but it isn't just a get sick and whatever disease. Folks with health problems absolutely can d…

>Who gets to choose who gets sick first - do remember that in the US a farm worker getting sick might bankrupt them and kill them not because a hospital bed isn't available - but because they can't afford it or end up having a heart attack after dealing with the stress of those costs.

But this is literally a every day risk and problem with or without covid-19 as there is a whole host of diseases they could catch any day, especially the flu. The bigger problem is our shitty healthcare system.

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

#80

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

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…

I think it's pretty sad we passed a $2.2T stimulus bill, with $500Bn in unemployment benefits, so the average person that gets laid off can make about $60k a year (adjusted for taxes) to not work -- and we did hardly nothing to protect people that actually need to work and are at high risk!

Worst of all, most of these jobs are low paying -- much less than you'd get from the current unemployment. We basically created an incentive to quit your job over fear of the virus and make more money collecting unemployment.

I mean, even in hospitals there are A LOT of jobs that pay less than you'd make from this new unemployment bill.

After taxes, the average nurse aid makes about half what they could collect on unemployment right now.

I'm not saying beefing up unemployment was bad. I'm just worried this is going to backfire, and it doesn't seem fair to people working in grocery stores, on farms, and most of all -- in hospitals. It would be nice if these workers got paid AT LEAST as much as if they became unemployed, for example.

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