Winging it with workers’ lives

EDITORIAL

BY ART CULLEN

Why not just fling the doors of the economy wide open since most of Storm Lake’s workforce has been cutting meat in close quarters with no benefit of testing for the duration? Forget that Iowa’s rate of infection ballooned over the weekend, or that Sioux City became the hottest spot in America. It doesn’t really matter, in Storm Lake anyhow, if you’re not bothering to test food workers.

Throw caution to the wind — which is what Gov. Kim Reynolds did Monday by allowing most businesses to open this week in 77 counties, and the rest in a couple weeks. This while Iowa’s infection rate is growing. Minnesota’s rate has been declining, yet Gov. Tim Walz suggests a much more cautious reopening process.

The state has said it does not have enough resources to test all food workers. It asked Tyson to test workers at Waterloo before it reopens the pork plant there. Storm Lake workers do not get tested, just screened for temperature. Testing is not administered to workers at any other number of food processers in Iowa because of sheer state and federal incompetence. We have no idea who among us is infected. And the state obviously doesn’t care that much. It is more important to bring in tax revenue and quiet the restless hungry for the buffet to open again, and to attend church. So long as “social distancing” is observed while dishing the gravy. The state obviously presumes that it is safe enough to work in a packinghouse alongside a thousand others, so what could be the harm of Sunday worship with brunch afterwards?

We thought that before we could spring back into action our numbers were supposed to be on the decline. The opposite is true. There are more Iowa deaths and hospitalizations than ever. And there are more reported cases. The Waterloo packing plant is still closed. But hogs are backing up in the supply chain and might be destroyed unless we can staff enough workers on the lines. And they are dropping left and right, or not showing up for work out of fear for the virus.

Because, Gov. Reynolds and the USDA did not act. In a mature, highly competitive business neither offered guidance on how to safely operate amid a pandemic. Each packer is left to compete in that vacuum. There was no federal assistance with protective equipment, or guidance. There is no uniform braking on line speeds. So everyone is left to compete. There are not enough tests available, so it is left to the employer to decide where and whom to test. Tyson has tried to provide protections to workers. The USDA, meanwhile, allowed for faster line speeds when workers say that slower speeds help increase social distancing. This is what is called the creative destruction of the marketplace, or you could call it controlled chaos.

It would seem we are affecting things only at the margins by keeping half of us home, when half of us are roaming around town unwittingly spreading the virus.

Reynolds insists on keeping us in the dark, in not explaining how you can lift restrictions around Sioux City when it leads the nation in new infections, and in ignoring the data from just last weekend. At first, we cut her some slack for trying to remain flexible while adjusting to a new reality without any real guidance from the President, who insists that this thing will just disappear with spring. It has become clear of late that Reynolds is on the same page. Wing it. When the government relief programs don’t work, it makes it all the more imperative to get businesses going again no matter the disease trendline. This is about business, not keeping the public safe and healthy.

We want Storm Lake open again. But first, we would like sufficient testing, especially for those in the most vulnerable positions. Then, we would like to know how restaurant owners are supposed to police social distancing. Those are the sorts of reasonable questions that do not preclude an efficient reopening of normal activities.

Reynolds is approaching the point of reckless for the sake of politics — that we must get the economy going or our political goose is cooked. The fact that neither Trump nor Reynolds will throw the food industry a lifeline with uniform operating guidance and resources like test kits shows that they are just playing it by ear, if at all. If they aren’t willing to do even that, why make the café or bar owner shoulder the burden with no help? Open it up, and as the President likes to say, “We’ll see what happens.”

What you don’t know could kill you.