Swine Flue and Local Issues - Racism

By John

Some are crying racism when it comes to the pandemic just because it comes from Mexico - or South of the border. Locally, we so far have three cases (Ventura County) that just haven't made it to the news - two from Oxnard area - a saturated agricultural area. And those two high school or grammer school children "did not visit Mexico" but live or are exposed to crowded conditions. Whatever that means. It’s all very PC to protect something, I imagine.

The third case, a heavy ag area, came from Saticoy Clinic De El Camino about ten miles from here. You can see it written in the newspaper, the Ventura Star, if you don’t believe me.

According to stats, "...the number of agricultural workers in the U.S. Will grow to about 700,000 by June and peak at 828,000 by September, according to US Department of Agriculture figures.". They will be spreading out across the USA as the crops come in - until fall -to harvest food. Starting right now.

So you decide if you would like to close the border, or listen to President Obama when he says, “The horse is out of the barn”. I think what he means is there is nothing we can do or the ACLU, Mexico, etc ad infinitum will be all over him like a bad habit if we so much as make a twitch toward closing the border. Why is it always them first before us?

I think we have some stake in this, and we should all rethink our views about imports and pandemics and how facile our college students are who USED TO DO ALL THE PICKING IN THE USA DURING THE SUMMER. We really should have lots of college students who are graduating into no jobs available to pick farms across the nation. Hello? Anyone there? That's why summer vacations were made - to pick crops on the family farm and follow the crops. - Not for students on their hands and knees on the pristine sands of Baja, Mexico to puke their guts out. Sigh.

That's a history lesson, not moral judgement. But it does sound like I might be anti-lazy.

We haven’t had one phone call from a college student out of school or work but we do get emails from THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES asking if they can come over and work our farm for next to nothing. Of course, for the time being, they are probably safer if they stayed home.

Because the flu numbers are not making sense we can all keep track them without relying on the politics of things by putting your area and numbers with the swine flu here for the rest to see under comments. County by county (or parish) would be best so there is no state duplication. So Ventura County has 3 so far, our population is 800,000. If you are very very concerned you can email this link to your entire email list and they can check in with their own flu pandemic numbers. I think its better than relying on a horse already out of the barn. One or two horses got to Tennessee as of a few hours ago - Nashville and Knoxville are seeing their first cases.