Coronavirus, Canned pork and Capitalism

How the covid-19 pandemic has exposed the ugly side of America.

It seems almost ironic that just weeks after disregarding the only candidate promising free healthcare for all, the American people and the world at large have been plunged into a medical crisis unlike any the world has seen in nearly a century. Whist people across the world have been affected dramatically, it seems the USA has been among the worst struck countries, registering over 700,000 confirmed cases and 32,000 deaths nationally.

Map showing how the USA is effected nationally

Whilst New York has been receiving a lot of media attention as being the epicentre of the Virus in the states with over 200,000 reported cases, however I would instead like to draw your attention to South Dakota which is only suffering from a little over a thousand confirmed cases. This paltry figure obviously pales in comparison with the destruction wrought on New York but upon inspection this otherwise almost encouragingly low figure exposes the problem at the crux of why the economic beliefs the US was founded on is becoming more and more outdated by the day.

Over 800 of the cases confirmed in South Dakota were employees at the Smithfield Foods processing plant, part of the world’s largest meat processing company and now the largest Coronavirus hotspot in America. Smithfield has been accused by multiple advocate groups of waiting too long to implement basic sanitary measures such as hand wash stations and many workers have claimed that the higher-ups at the processing plant were aware of staff illness but failed to report them, endangering the almost 4000 employees at the factory. The mostly minimum wage workers at the plant felt obliged to continue to show up for work regardless of the fact that many were aware of risk to themselves and fellow workers as, without any capital to fall back on, work at the plant was the only way for them to make ends meet.

Smithfield’s South Dakota meat processing plant

This shameful display of placing profit over personal is one being repeated across the Unites States and emphasises now more than ever that the nation’s lack of any accessible healthcare for disadvantaged people as well as a dysfunctional benefits scheme is becoming more clearly outdated by the hour. Perhaps after all this is over the USA will take a moment to reflect on the archaic and defunct form of capitalism that fails to meet modern standards of human decency for much of the working class.

(Photos: Getty, John Hopkins University and MercoPress)