Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Covid-19

Regarding the USA. What is happening about getting treatment? Is there funding to help pay for it? Are people being given big bills? Here we have the NHS.
The reason I ask is that I saw a report about a man getting a massive hospital bill for his treatment.
Is it a case of haves versus have nots?

After almost four weeks with no cases in NZ we have two new ones , a couple of girls come in from the UK to visit a relative on compassionate grounds , unfortunately there was a slip up in testing and they changed location so now a lot of cross checking including the flight that they arrived on.

How was it even discovered, waikiore? Were there serious symptoms among the girls or are there regular routine examinations?

One was showing symptoms and they got tested in Wellington , there are a lot of testing facilities here, I pedalled past three on a ride yesterday morning. As far as Trump saying that their numbers are only going up because of more testing than other countries , what rubbish.

Mr. Donald Trump is not my benchmark. But meanwhile even here in Germany they do not test as much as they could. I guess to keep the numbers lower after the lock down is less strict. We will see.

Edit, right now they count 657 cases in just this one factory.

It is such reports that call into question a deceptive normalization. At least one remains aware of the still existing danger. It's incredible... more than 400 cases in a single week in a single slaughterhouse. The news is half an hour young:


With 400 newly infected persons since the beginning of the week alone, the corona outbreak at Tönnies in Rheda-Wiedenbrück is becoming increasingly widespread. Of the 500 test results so far available on Wednesday from employees at the slaughterhouse and meat-cutting plant in the Gütersloh district, 400 are positive, a district spokeswoman said. However, further results are still pending.


Similar reports were heard from the USA weeks ago. The cause is probably not the slaughterhouse. It is the living conditions of the workers. They live together in a very confined space and are actually exploited. Most of them come from Southeast Europe in the hope that they will be better off materially here in Germany. The virus also exposes social issues.

Heinz,

cram people together in less than ideal conditions and it only takes one for this bug to go through everyone. Social distancing, 1m is enough, and face masks together work.
Workers dorms, shared bathrooms, poor personal hygiene and no real distancing....

It isn't slavery, but it isn't far off.
I thought Germany had employment laws that stopped exploitation of people like that.
I can understand such contempt for people in the USA, but in the EU, today?

It's a rogue operation. I do not know the exact tricks, partly it is illegal, partly loopholes of the law are used. They are Eastern European workers who are mediated through dubious sweatshops. These sweatshops offer the work of the poor workers as a finished product. This means that the slaughterhouse in Germany is off the hook. If the workers were temporary rented workers, the slaughterhouse would have to provide the clean and legal working conditions (the social benefits and decent wages habe to be provided by the rental company of the workers).
But since the workers from Eastern Europe are sold to the slaughterhouse as a finished product, all dignity and social benefits are lost. The German word for this is "Werkverträge". This is ok, for example, if a serious company outsources its complete IT to another company. But it is perverse when it makes shabby working conditions for slaughterhouse workers possible. I am not sure but I think this companies can pay the workers to conditions of third world or at least Bulgarian conditions if this company is based in those countries, it has not to be German conditions, but this I do not know exactly.

I do not know the background why such a disgrace is even possible. Perhaps there are English texts that also describe the problem. Perhaps it is also a loophole in European law.
However, it should be forbidden, punished and ended, forever.

This is the dilemma - the consequences of lock down on the mental and physical long term health of the population including how the economic fall out will impact us all will be far reaching and has to be factored in when deciding on how to reduce Covid infections.

I was speaking to one of our neighbours today. She works in the TV industry as a program producer. She commissions series for channels. Her specialism is nature programs, think David Attenborough style.

Her industry is in tailspin. In the past a crew of 10-15 people would go and live in a jungle for 3-9 months and work together to bring the footage of a season. They would stand shoulder to shoulder to get the shots. They would live in an air-conditioned container for this time sharing pretty much everything. Social distancing, not a chance. They also have rules to stay in groups so the local animals don't see them as lunch.

She said that you can expect to see a lot less animals on the gogglebox in the next twelve months. Most of the series they were mid recording got put on ice and some of the people were not able to get home. They have seen an 80% drop in income and none of the schemes apply to them.

It put a perspective on my "home isolation" challenges of finding toilet paper......and vodka. Not necessarily at the same time. Or in that order....