In the wake of Donald Trump's executive order demanding the reopening of the nation's meat processing plants, a new Bloomberg News analysis shows that the COVID-19 pandemic is now spreading at "more than twice the national rate" in counties with major plants.
COVID-19 infections are rose 19% in the week after Trump's April 28 order. In counties with large-scale meat processors, cases rose 40%. It’s not clear yet, however, just how much we can glean from that data.
Upon examination, it's not clear the soaring infections can be directly tied to Trump's order yet. The incubation period for the virus is thought to last up to 14 days, so infections caused by reopening closed plants would only just begin to be seen after a week, and can be more properly measured a week from now.
Bloomberg also cites a rebutting spokesperson from the Meat Institute (cough) who claims the soaring cases are due to the industry's "diligent" testing efforts, which is a good argument if you ignore every uncomfortable question about how the meat industry became a nationwide infection hotspot to begin with.
The truth is likely to be a combination of all of the above. After the deaths of 30 employees and infection of hundreds at individual plants, the industry is indeed eager to test its own workers rather than remain shuttered. It may not be just that cases in rural meat processing-reliant counties have jumped 40% in the last week: it may be that cases in entire regions have soared to higher numbers than we think, but that forced-back-to-work meat processors are the only ones being tested regardless of symptoms.
It also may be that the 40% number represents soaring cases among workers who were already exposed to the virus, introducing wider community spread before Trump ordered them back to work—meaning that the number of cases in those same plants and counties are about to skyrocket now that the same workers have been told to work despite the dangers, and with few changes in actual plant conditions.
We don't know. We can make guesses, but we don't know, and the only way to find out would be to provide all surrounding counties with the same heightened rate of asymptomatic testing that now-panicking meat producers are now providing. That's not going to happen. It also doesn't mean that meat processors are suddenly being "responsible" by agreeing to the testing of their workers; it's the practices of the industry itself that led to these companies and these plants becoming hotspots in the first place, resulting in community spread throughout their counties.
Instead, the Trump-to-Tyson action is a large-scale human experiment. Trump ordering workers back to work even though the industry remains an indisputable virus hotspot is an estimation that the products and profits produced by the reopenings will produce more value than will be offset by assuredly increased COVID-19 deaths in surrounding communities. While the workers themselves remain unconvinced, the White House, Republican campaign strategists, and plant owners seem confident the math will work out right.
The initial figures suggest that it's going to go very wrong. They only way to argue it is not going very wrong is to make the case that the industry itself is making: It's not that COVID-19 cases are absolutely skyrocketing in meat processing-reliant counties—it's that COVID-19 cases are absolutely skyrocketing everywhere in those rural states. We just don't know it yet because the meat processing plants are the only ones forced into testing for it.
That's not better. That's not at all better.
In a few more weeks there may be a fairly definitive answer as to who is right. If deaths, rather than confirmed infections, soar evenly across each state, then the Meat Institute is right: pandemic infections have been evenly spreading everywhere, but were identified mostly just in the handful of places where we were looking. If deaths remain clustered in the counties surrounding meat processors, then the industry’s many critics are right, and the reopening of already-hit plants is the disproportionate cause of those new deaths.
Trump, his team, and Republican governors are all insisting on a third possibility: Actually, maybe the virus is no longer dangerous and deaths will be minimal everywhere because shut up, that’s why. Of all of the possibilities, that is the one with the least evidence behind it, but now that conservatism has dived so deeply into the realms of fantasy and conspiracy, it can’t really counted as a surprise that they are banking on the Magic Unicorn theory.
