Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
{sigh}
I'd use my post above from several weeks ago to attempt to explain the difference between outright disagreement vs. attempting to approach a conversation from a different perspective that hasn't been discussed yet, but it kinda gets back to this:
You don't pay any attention to what anyone who doesn't agree with you in total lockstep says anyway. And even then, you have no thoughts of your own to actually offer. You've checked any willingness you ever had to analyse information at the door....and frankly you almost certainly never had any ability to do so anyway so it's probably for the best.
Okay great so please stop acting like you know more than Fauci because you come across like you do in your posts. You probably don't even realize it but you do.
To me, you seem like an egomaniac who likes to post page long posts to show CP how smart he is. It's a bit ridiculous at times.
I never once said 'arrest anyone that leaves their home' so don't quote that. I indirectly advocated martial law but it wasn't like I wanted to see something like that happen. I just didn't want the virus to spread like crazy kill God knows how many of my fellow Americans. I never said 'hey lets get martial law going and arrest everyone that goes outside' and you know that.
Even if I did who gives a shit? I'm posting here for fun not to submit a college thesis paper on the subject.
Have a good day man.
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CV19 causing large supplies of bacon
Coronavirus has pulled the rug out from under demand for pork belly and ribs, driving hog prices to their lowest level in nearly two decades.
Amid simmering concerns the nation's meatpacking capacity could tighten as workers get sick and plants close, hog farmers now also face major losses on every pig they raise and sell.
About two-thirds of pork belly, from which bacon is derived, is purchased by the food service industry, and the shutdown of restaurants, colleges and schools has hit hard.
"Demand for the belly really dropped," said Lori Stevermer, a hog farmer near Easton. "That type of pressure just continues to bring prices down."
Since March 25, the price per pound for lean hog has dropped about 20 cents. A typical hog yields about 210 pounds of lean meat, so that's a drop of $42 per animal, reflecting the lowest hog futures since 2002.
"Taking feed costs into account, it's projected we'd lose about $25 per head the next year," said Dave Preisler, director of the Minnesota Pork Producers Association.
It's not just bacon causing the decline. Closed restaurants aren't purchasing pork chops or ribs either.
Packing plants are putting more meat in storage, but they're also trying to send more bacon and other types of meat to the grocery store, where demand has been strong.
"You're trying to pivot," Stevermer said. "Instead of going to food service and restaurants, can you take that into the grocery stores? That would involve cutting the carcass a different way, and packaging it differently."
Food service companies buy bacon by the 15- or 20-pound box. Shifting the supply chain to wrap that bacon in a 12-ounce package for the grocery store takes time.
"You can't just do it overnight, and in the meantime, that product goes into freezers. That's another thing that's weighing on the market, is all that meat in storage," said Preisler.
"I just don't know that we could have invented something to make a bigger mess than this," Preisler said of the pandemic.
Another profound concern is whether packing plants — which already complained of a labor shortage — can accept all the pigs that farmers are raising for slaughter. In some states, workers tested positive for COVID-19 and plants closed as a result.
"That weighs heavily on farmers' minds, I would say," Stevermer said.
A Tyson Foods pork plant in southeast Iowa shuttered temporarily after more than two dozen workers tested positive for COVID-19, and a smattering of beef and poultry plants have closed in other parts of the country.
Unions are tracking the spread of the virus, and monitoring poultry processors in the southeastern U.S.
No meatpacking plant that Minnesota farmers primarily send hogs to has shuttered, but Preisler said capacity is declining around the country, and some farmers are feeding their pigs a little less protein so they don't grow as quickly, on the chance they won't be able to find a market for them as readily as before.
"A number of farms are doing that," Preisler said.
Sleepy Eye, Minn.-based Christensen Farms produces 3 million hogs for slaughter each year in five states.
One of its key packers, Seaboard Foods, a company based in Kansas City with a plant in Sioux City, Iowa, said it is open and operating at full capacity, while screening visitors, making "sanitization and temperature-taking stations available to our employees before and after work," cutting nonessential travel and providing masks to employees.
"The U.S. Government has identified the food supply as critical to the nation's infrastructure and has communicated the food industry has a special responsibility to continue to produce food to help feed our nation," a spokesman said a statement. "Seaboard Foods embraces and accepts this great responsibility."
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Originally Posted by kgrund:
I struggle with the whole "until we get a vaccine" notion of things going back to normal. If your benchmark is near 0% fear, this might be true. However, if you have therapeutics available that can deeply limit getting the virus or the severity of the virus, a huge number of people are going to OK with assuming that level of risk with little concern. We assume risk every day whenever we go about our business. People will be comfortable when they perceive it is both a known and controllable risk IMO.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of room for interpretation of "completely safe" in his assessment. My 87-year-old grandfather is likely not going to be going to a Chiefs game until a vaccine is out, sure.
But for a vast majority of the population, I have to believe that we'll be able to go about life relatively normally by the fall with the exception of the areas where we truly have people crammed in like sardines (concerts, sporting events, etc.).
Masks? Sure. Temperature scans? Sure. But life has to get moving again at some point.
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