A shortsighted elite prioritization of capitalism directly at the cost of essential expendable workers, their loved ones, and their communities, compounded by bizarre notions that somehow communicable diseases are covered by the first amendment and that freedom means wage slavery are, of course, only part of the story of the pandemic, and frankly, the part I have focused on.[1]
But the non-human animal slaughter and flesh distribution business has been a hotspot for COVID-19 and began shutting down. Donald Trump considered the business “essential” and ordered it to reopen[2] despite worker misgivings,[3] apparently thus immunizing it from state regulation. The business is still a hotspot.[4] This, too, is part of the story on how the novel coronavirus continues to spread around the country.[5] But folks gotta have that bacon, even though this form of ‘agriculture’ has been implicated in the spread of deadly disease from time immemorial,[6] even as Grandma[7] wheezes in an undescribable panic, her heart pounding, desperate to breathe.[8] STEAK!!!!
[Donald] Trump had a very different view of meat-packing plants a year ago, when he ordered the facilities to be raided by ICE and “illegals” be rounded up and deported. Nearly 30% of meat-packing workers are foreign-born, said a 2016 Government Accountability Office report. Nearly two-thirds are either Latino (35%), Black (20%) or Asian (8%), according to a 2016 Northwest Arkansas Workers’ Justice Center report.[9]
And it turns out that Latinx folks in cities are “expendable” for many of the same reasons as Blacks. I guess when you can’t deport them, the novel coronavirus might do.[10]
We do not have this virus under control.[11] Instead, we have a disdain for life[12] that transcends species, race, and age boundaries; this virus treats us the way we treat ourselves, nonhuman animals, and the environment.[13] Vegetarian ecofeminists would have told us so.[14] But you know, um, STEAK!!!!