Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[EricHiggin]

SpokenTruth said:

EricHiggin said:

Heard from a farmer friend of mine who's part of a few associations that seasonal migrant workers are likely going to fall under the Gov travel bans. While finding local help may actually be somewhat possible if industry slows down, it depends how desperate those people really are. Finding local help is damn near impossible these days when it comes to manual farm labor, even if you're willing to pay well above min wage. If this were to end up the case, a lot of farmers are going to be in considerable trouble, which will also cause stress to the food market, increasing prices and potentially causing some shortages. It's certainly not good for the migrant workers either, who many come from vacation resort type countries, who won't be able to find work there either if they can't come here.
Hopefully this illness starts to dwindle soon enough, or that the Gov starts working on a plan to help solve this potential problem along with all the rest.

Hmmmm. It's almost like certain policies......   No, I better not kick that hornets nest in here.

EDIT: Hopefully things work out for your farmer friend.  This crisis is going to impact all of us in some fashion.

Everything is a double edged sword to some degree. It's not always easy to see the other side of the blade though. If the migrants can't get tested, allowed in, and self isolated, which shouldn't be a big problem other than the medical costs for the testing, which our system takes care of those migrant workers while here, then a Gov incentive to get locals to go work on farms would make sense. I'm sure there's plenty of other things that could be done though.