South Dakota Meat Plant Is Now Country's Biggest Coronavirus Hot Spot

[Judi Lynn]

Refugees from around the world worked at the Smithfield pork factory in Sioux Falls. Now they face mounting illness and the sudden loss of their jobs.



Achut Deng and her sons, whom she supports with her wages from a pork plant in South Dakota.

By Caitlin Dickerson and Miriam Jordan
April 15, 2020, 5:48 p.m. ET

An immigrant from El Salvador bought a three-bedroom home with a basement for her family. A single mother from Ethiopia sent her daughters to college. A refugee from Sudan bought bunk beds for her boys, new couches and a dining table.

Before the Smithfield pork factory in Sioux Falls became the radiating core of South Dakota’s coronavirus outbreak, with more than 640 cases linked to the plant, it had been a kind of beacon of American prosperity for tens of thousands of employees who landed on the high prairie from Africa, East Asia and Latin America. But the opportunities were not obtained easily.

For more than 100 years, people fleeing war zones and abject poverty have put in long hours at the eight-story plant that churns 24 hours a day alongside the tree-lined Big Sioux River. They worked side by side in front of speeding conveyor belts and behind vibrating electric knives powerful enough to slice through a hog every 30 to 40 seconds. Many iced their wrists at night and relied on a daily dose of ibuprofen to keep up with the work of slaughtering, processing and packaging pork products for global consumption.

In return, they received wages above the minimum and health benefits that stretched far in a state with a low cost of living, uplifting generations of immigrants who arrived in the United States without formal education or knowledge of the English language.

More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/us/coronavirus-south-dakota-meat-plant-refugees.html

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Draw a circle with Souix Falls as the Center point

75 miles in diameter and you will see the real Nightmare about to happen.

[sop]

2. The virus is spreading to flyover country.

[gibraltar72]

3. The good thing is the Governor has this all under control.