-Some things, I know it's a little funny
talking to the media,
but you can't always believe what you read,
but the WHO is claiming that China didn't disclose
that they even had it and that's mind-boggling to me.
So, where does it start? Does it start in Postville?
Did it start in New York? Did it start in China?
The what-ifs, who-ifs, how, and all that are something
that probably only God really knows the truth.
-When we started hearing
about the virus on the news and all,
we became afraid from everything
that we heard,
but we hoped it wouldn't reach us here.
But all of a sudden,
we heard a rumor about a rabbi
who had come to New York, who had [the coronavirus]
and had been removed from the plant
because he had the virus but kept on working.
And then everyone started talking about
whether it was true or not.
-So, in the early days of the pandemic here,
the pattern we saw was
a definite number of viral introductions.
We tracked about 14 cases where the virus had arrived
in our region, but, at the time,
the spread in most of those cases was quite limited.
The one striking exception we saw
was in Postville, in Iowa.
By comparing the sequence of that Postville virus
to other viruses
from all over the world that had been sequenced,
it shared most similarity with viruses
that had been circulating a couple of weeks
earlier in the Northeastern United States,
particularly in New York City.
So it quickly became clear that that was centered
on a meatpacking plant.
-The rumors and the numbers kept propagating
and the Iowa Department of Public Health
was not sharing specific information
on where this outbreak was
and people assumed it was Postville.
So then, 20 miles away, people in Waukon
were not taking protective measures,
not taking action, because
"It was in Postville, not in our area".
And that's not good, either,
because you had people with a false sense of security.
-Initially, it was community-spread.
After the first couple of weeks,
we started noticing more meatpacking plant employees
and their household contacts and then, from there,
we just kind of saw those cases multiply.
-It was clear that a couple of individuals from New York City
had visited Postville at a time frame consistent
with the introduction of the virus
and those individuals were known to be COVID-positive.
So, based on all of these data,
we think it was a single introduction
of a single strain of virus into this region and then,
because it was in a meatpacking plant,
which is a particularly challenging environment,
I believe, to mitigate viral spread,
it really spread like wildfire very, very quickly.
-I heard there were many infected [with the coronavirus].
I talked to those in charge in the laundry room,
the ones who give you gowns, gloves, all that,
and I told them I needed a face mask.
I was told, "No, we won't give you a face mask".
I asked, "Why"?
And I was told they were running out and that,
"We are only going to give them to the sick".
-First, it ripped through the Jewish community
and we really got a grip on it quickly.
And no deaths from the onset, but a number of sick people.
Then, it triggered over to the Hispanic community,
and then, [chuckling]
triggered over to the Muslim community.
Then, it triggered over to, also, the population at large.
-The largest single immigration raid in the country:
700 warrants, 300 arrests.
Agriprocessors, a kosher meatpacking plant,
lost three-quarters of its workforce.
-ICE agents executed criminal
and civil search warrants at the company,
resulting in the seizure of boxes of evidence
and the arrest of 389 undocumented alien workers.
-Postville is unique.
It's like a Norman Rockwell, bucolic town.
It's very rare to find Orthodox Jews in a rural setting,
but here, because of the needs of the kosher industry
to have a place, it's better to bring the plant
to do the processing where the animals are,
instead of having to ship cows all over the place.
So they came here. -I started getting sick April 8.
The Marines [National Guard] came to do the tests.
I was not there because I was already sick.
So the Marines [National Guard] came and did the tests.
Those who did not show up that day were sent to a hospital
and the plant paid for that.
From there, they implemented additional sanitation [policies]
and more.
-I said to my wife, [Magdalena],
I feel this rage against those that manage the plant
because I heard that, in other places,
when people heard rumors that [the coronavirus was spreading],
security measures were taken. Nothing was done here.
-[My husband, Rudy] tells me, "You give yourself fully
to your job
and, when you get sick, they don't care".
-You know, sometimes you have a building that goes on fire
and you bring all the fire departments
from all the local towns and you still can't put the fire out.
So does that mean you don't have good fire departments?
Sometimes the fire is so hot that nobody really knows
how to bring it under control.