AI devising a more equitable tax system

by Peter Grad , Tech Xplore

Credit: Salesforce

Everybody loves to hate taxes. And unless you are lucky enough to live in one of a small handful of countries with no income tax—Bermuda, Monaco or the United Arab Emirates, for instance—you likely dread Tax Day when you dig deep into your pockets and send a chunk of your hard-earned cash to government coffers.

Billions of words have been written about taxes. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. proudly declared, "I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization." But Mark Twain scowled, " The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin."

In the end, what we can most hope for is a fair tax system. Economists have opined about the most equitable system of taxation for ages. Tax too much and you reduce the incentive to earn more. Tax too little and those who are not rich suffer more. There has always been little agreement among economists on the best approach. Place 10 economists in a room, as the saying goes, and you will come up with 11 opinions.

Against that backdrop, scientists at the U.S. business technology company Salesforce devised an artificial intelligence system charged with testing and developing the ideal tax system in a simulated environment. The program, called AI Economist, applies reinforcement learning to help governments worldwide achieve a more equitable taxation system. Reinforcement learning is the application of reward and punishment to machine algorithms for the purpose of maximizing desirable outcomes. That concept was used in Google's DeepMind projects AlphaGo and AlphaZero.

The AI Economist team states in a report recently posted on the company's website: "Economic inequality is accelerating globally and is a growing concern due to its negative impact on economic opportunity, health and social welfare. Taxes are important tools for governments to reduce inequality. However, finding a tax policy that optimizes equality along with productivity is an unsolved problem."

Richard Socher, who heads up the six-person research team, further explained, "With the AI Economist, we've applied reinforcement learning algorithms to discover how novel tax frameworks can reduce inequality and improve economic productivity, and ultimately make the world a better place."

The program basically creates massive numbers of ecosystems with theoretical workers who trade currency and construct homes. Pay levels and skill sets vary and a "tax master" controlled by AI determines optimal tax rates. Millions of years of hypothetical economic models are constructed to determine the system that achieves the greatest productivity and the greatest income.

Salesforce researchers say economists tend to rely on theorems based on rational behavior. Machine learning allows them to introduce unexpected behaviors.

"Our model is incredibly powerful," said team member Nikhil Naik. "Our world today is getting more complex and economic theories of the future need to be able to seamlessly incorporate additional requirements such as environmental protection. In addition, economic agents often exhibit complex, irrational, competitive or collaborative behaviors. AI helps to model such complexity and a broad spectrum of behaviors."

The researchers say their models have achieved scenarios that are 16 percent more effective than real-world economic models created by economists.

Recognizing the problem of corruptive political considerations in tax policy, team member Alex Trott said, "It would be amazing to make tax policy less political and more data driven."

Salesforce is releasing all AI Economist code and encourages economists, governments and all other interested parties to try their hand at devising a better tax plan.

New models see coronavirus-induced recession, say economists

More information: blog.einstein.ai/the-ai-economist/

Vancouver Amazon VP quits in ‘dismay’ over apparent COVID-19 dismissals

By Tyler Orton | May 4, 2020



What happened: Vancouver-based vice-president leaves tech giant over concerns about how workers are being treated

Why it matters: Varying workplace responses to COVID-19 raises concerns over worker safety

A high-level Vancouver executive at Amazon Web Services (AWS) has quit his job in “dismay” over how his former parent company has been treating workers amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tim Bray, previously an AWS vice-president and distinguished engineer, revealed that May 1 marked his last day on the job after more than five years with the tech giant.


“I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of COVID-19,” he said in a blog post published Monday (May 4).

Bray was referencing dismissals that unfolded last month, when warehouse workers reached out to the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ) organization for support raising awareness over what they considered to be unsafe working conditions during the pandemic.

One warehouse worker had already been dismissed in the wake of internal company protests.

Some AECJ members in turn promoted a petition and organized a video call to bring attention to the issue.

They were subsequently dismissed for what Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq:AMZN) described as violating internal policies on commenting on the company publicly without authorization.

“VPs shouldn’t go publicly rogue, so I escalated through the proper channels and by the book,” Bray said in his post, adding he would not provide further details about those discussions other than that he believes he brought up his concerns to the appropriate people.

“That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned.”

The former tech executive the job provided a $1 million between salary and share vestings, but he was left uneasy after warehouse workers repeatedly raised concerns about the safety of Amazon’s fulfillment centres.

Amazon has previously stated all necessary safety precautions are being met at its warehouses.

“And at the end of the day, the big problem isn’t the specifics of COVID-19 response. It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st century capitalism is done,” Bray said in his post.

“Amazon is exceptionally well-managed and has demonstrated great skill at spotting opportunities and building repeatable processes for exploiting them. It has a corresponding lack of vision about the human costs of the relentless growth and accumulation of wealth and power.”

He said the firing of those workers is “evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture.”

But Bray had kinder words for AWS, the cloud-computing division of Amazon.

“It treats its workers humanely, strives for work/life balance, struggles to move the diversity needle (and mostly fails, but so does everyone else), and is by and large an ethical organization. I genuinely admire its leadership,” he said in his post.

“Of course, its workers have power. The average pay is very high, and anyone who’s unhappy can walk across the street and get another job paying the same or better.”

AWS, which has offices scattered across downtown Vancouver, is planning to take up 416,000 square feet in the redeveloped Canada Post building on West Georgia Street, with plans to add 3,000 more workers to the city in the coming years.

Amazon did not respond to a request from comment from Business in Vancouver prior to publication.

UPDATE (May 5, 6:50 a.m.): An Amazon spokeswoman said the company has no comment on the matter.

B.C. nurses, doctors cite protective equipment shortage, safety concerns

Ministry said ‘significant effort’ made to obtain sufficient protective gear

By Jeremy Hainsworth | May 5, 2020

iStock

B.C.’s nurses and doctors have added their voices to those of those across the country who say there are insufficient amounts of personal protective equipment (PPE) for those on the frontline of the pandemic response.

“Nurses are getting only one mask per shift. Others have been told to leave their used mask on a piece of paper towel when they go on a break,” B.C. Nurses Union president Christine Sorensen said.

About 90% of doctors surveyed by the Canadian Medical Association April 28 indicated greater availability of PPE would help reduce their anxiety around the pandemic.

Indeed, Doctors of B.C. president Dr. Kathleen Ross said, “We have continuing concerns about supplies of PPE, understanding there is a worldwide shortage. These shortages aren’t just in hospitals, there is also a lack of access and supply for community based specialists and family physicians around the province.

“We have raised these concerns with the Ministry of Health and health authorities,” Ross said.

Provincial medical health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has said currently postponed surgeries may be available this month.

But, said Ross, “when elective surgeries begin ramping up, additional pressure will be put on PPE supplies, which is causing additional concern.”

Sorenson said the union has received 1,700 complaints since March from nurses across B.C. health saying employers aren’t providing adequate numbers of gowns, gloves, face shields and N95 respirator masks. The union said the equipment is critical to protecting both nurses and their patients as the coronavirus pandemic continues.

Asked if there was a shortage of PPE, the Ministry of Health could not immediately answer.

“Healthcare workers are the frontline in our battle against COVID-19,”spokesperson Alex Peaker said. “They are responding courageously to monumental challenges during this unprecedented time. Their safety is our fundamental concern.

Peaker said the government “undertook a significant and active effort to acquire additional supply of personal protective equipment through all available options.”

As well, Peaker said, elective surgeries were postponed in preparation for COVID-19 and reduced hospital acute-care capacity to about 60%. “This protects healthcare workers, patients and the public.”

“We will continue to stand with and protect our healthcare workers, with the support of all British Columbians,” Peaker said.

Sorensen, however, questions what pandemic response measures or other disease transmission controls existed before the pandemic and how healthcare sector employers intend to respond as the pandemic continues.

“Respirators, masks and other PPE are meant to be the last line of defense for care providers, after all other control measures are in place,” Sorensen said. “The fact that some hospital emergency rooms still have triage desks without plexi-glass barriers, like the ones now present in grocery stores and food processing plants, is quite simply beyond me.”

Ross said PPE supplies are coordinated provincially through the Provincial Health Services Authority and distributed to health authorities.

Ross said doctors have been using virtual care options more often during the pandemic but said as restrictions ease, in-person care would increase creating a need for PPE in community practice.

“The process for acquiring PPE for community doctors is less clear than for those in facilities, as there is no real acquisition process yet in place, Ross said. “Community doctors are finding there is a lack of information about supply and most don’t know where to obtain PPE or who to ask.

She said discussions are ongoing as to where PPE can be sourced.

“ This will likely be through the emergency operations committees for each health authority,” Ross said. “We have asked health authorities to clarify this process.”

And, Ross explained, some health authorities are working with family practitioners but only in selected areas.

“This is a significant challenge, and we are working with the provincial government to develop plans that meet the needs of community doctors in a timely way,” Ross said.

Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and Fraser Health Authority referred questions to the ministry.

The B.C. Hospital Employers Association could not be immediately reached for comment.

jhainsworth@glaciermedia.ca

@jhainswo



VIEW COMMENTS

Anti-virus measures in place at Richmond's food-packing operations
There have been COVID-19 outbreaks at food processing facilities across the Lower Mainland, but Richmond seems to have avoided the same issues


By Alan Campbell, Richmond News | May 5, 2020

Social distancing and PPE is very evident at Organic Ocean's operations at Steveston Harbour. Photo submitted

While health authorities grapple with COVID-19 outbreaks at food processing facilities across the Lower Mainland, similar operations in Richmond appear to have side-stepped that particular landmine.

There are seven confirmed cases of the virus at Fraser Valley Specialty Poultry in Chilliwack, 54 at Superior Poultry in Coquitlam and 35 at United Poultry in Vancouver.

Some of those cases may be linked to temporary foreign workers, who often live in large numbers in the same accommodation.

However, according to the union which represents many of the employees at such facilities, there have been no reported cases of COVID-19 in Richmond.

Parm Kahlon, spokesperson for UFCW 1518 local – which has 112 members at Donald’s Fine Foods on Mitchell Island in north Richmond – said major changes have been made to the operations since the pandemic started.

“Staff are all wearing gloves and masks and using plexi-glass, all provided by the company,” Kahlon told the Richmond News.

“Staff benches and tables (in break rooms) have been removed and there are now tents now outside for breaks and lunches, where there is more space.”

Kahlon said the company has also created more distance between workers on production lines and is staggering break times to avoid large groups gathering.

The News has reached out to Donald's Fine Foods and several other Richmond processing plants for comment on their operations.

It has also contacted the Migrant Workers Centre - a B.C.-based non-profit which provides legal advocacy - to find out if temporary foreign workers are being employed at Richmond food processing/packing operations.

Meanwhile, another Richmond-based company in the food sector is thankful it got well ahead of the pandemic curve, when it outfitted all employees with PPE and totally re-worked its operations several months ago.

Guy Dean, president and general manager at Organic Ocean Seafood in Steveston Harbour, said his company has been working with a limited crew at the plant since March, when it also shut off access to the operations side for people who don’t need to touch the product.

The company specializes in high-end seafood, such as salmon, halibut, ling cod, sablefish and spot prawns and supplies some of the world’s top chefs, from across North America to Hong Kong and Singapore.

“We took COVID social and physical distancing very seriously at a very early stage, around the time the (World Health Organization) declared it a pandemic, but way before B.C. started making recommendations and orders,” said Dean.

“It was critical for us to have employee safety and to have protection of our resources. We locked down long before it became official.”

Dean said the company has an investor who was “very tuned in to what was happening around the world” and gave them an early heads up as to what was around the corner.

“We were well aware of what was coming and went out and got our PPE stock before anyone else had even considered it,” added Dean.

Ordinarily, Organic Ocean would have 17 employees at the Steveston plant, including office staff.

But they are now down to only four people at any one time in the operations side, normally there would be seven, while the office staff are all working from home.

“We work in teams and we had to split them up. We have a safety officer who jumps on it the second it’s not happening,” said Dean.

However, like most businesses that supply the restaurant trade, Organic Ocean has suffered a massive financial hit, losing about 80 per cent of its orders.

The company didn’t sit around waiting for a miracle, though, it pivoted 180 degrees and started doing home deliveries across the Lower Mainland.

“We had to re-invent ourselves,” said Dean, adding that they also donate produce to the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver.
“We

 took about two weeks to get something up and running which would normally take six months to a year.

“We got some of our business back in Singapore, but they relapsed. But Hong Kong and other locations are slowly coming back on line.”

As for the current push across B.C. to have the current restrictions on social activities – such as restaurants and bars – lifted, the new model of operating at Organic Ocean seems to be here to stay, for a very long time.

“We plan to listen to the science, which continues to tell us to be cautious,” added Dean.

“We may see some easing (in restrictions) and B.C. has done an amazing job. Hopefully we will see some food business return.

“We don’t see us changing those restrictions to staff any time soon. This is the new normal; our employees will be required to wear (PPE) in perpetuity.”

Richmond News

Commentary

Real work of rebuilding pandemic-levelled economy has yet to begin

By Kirk LaPointe | May 6, 2020, 

We have reached the end of the beginning and hope this is not the beginning of the end.

It proved relatively easy to shut down much of the old economy. The new economy will be much more difficult to restart and rebuild.

Governments have no recent experience with leadership on this scale. They find it far easier to provide aid than to propel activity, just as it’s simpler to spend than generate what to spend.

Wednesday’s briefing by B.C. Premier John Horgan signified the start of his most important chapter. How he manages these next months will affect our lives and his government’s.

What Horgan aims is to translate a horrible set of circumstances into the best possible outcomes. His go-slow message – our new normal of six feet of separation in a social-distanced economy – is orchestrated with different instruments entering the symphony in discrete movements. Most are out of tune and the musicians are rusty.

We’ll get our hair and teeth and bad backs looked after soon. Strangely named “elective” surgeries – can’t recall ever offering to have one – will get scheduled. School will be voluntary, child care will resume. Campgrounds will cautiously open. Retail outlets will try.

Concerts and pro sports are future considerations. Handshakes are a thing of the past.

In two short months that have felt like an eternity, COVID-19 has swiftly suppressed business and social life. The induced coma that is our economy has to be reawakened, but the patient’s metabolism has changed.

AS THE WIRED CAPITALISTS TOLD US IN THE NINETIES THE FUTURE IS THE SERVICE ECONOMY

In short order we have become a society of remote work, of online shopping, of deliveries, of take-out, of using technology to counter the human nature to physically connect – and of living in fear of the consequences of a contagion that is flattened statistically but not actually.

Many jobs, businesses and sectors are ruined beyond repair. Personal finances harmed by market crashes will force many to work longer. There will be a semi-permanent gap that won’t be restored readily. What replaces them requires ingenuity, nimbleness, rapid trial and even more rapid walking away from error. These are not particular attributes of governments, yet governments cannot simply yield to markets when public safety is still at stake.

The B.C. plan appears to sanction a doubling of our social contacts – what it calls 60% of the “old normal” – and of the overall risk of coronavirus. What the plan lacks is a great deal of encouragement; like much of what government has delivered in recent months, it’s about boundaries and restrictions and more about don’t than about do.

While it is true that the province didn’t initially close as many things as did others as the pandemic arrived, we are not being dispatched into the Star Trek holodeck. The lid is opened to release some steam but not taken off the simmering pot. We are looking at restraint for 12 to 18 non-vaccine, non-antiviral months, there will be some steps back before two steps forward are taken, and what that will mean for businesses and for daily behaviour is a guessing game.

STATE CAPITALISM, ON THE ROAD TO SOCIALISM WHY STOP AT RECONSTRUCTING THE OLD ORDER BUILD THE NEW SOCIETY NOW

What it requires from government will be a genuine recognition that businesses small and large will be in the same need as those they employ. The investments that people and companies have made in government through their tax support for the greater good now has to be reinvested back into them for this new greater good, to spur an enterprising spirit in dispirited times and to extend the triage to ensure the portion of our identities that associate with work do not disappear en masse.

Wednesday’s outline sets a framework for guardedness. Next up, at some point not far from now, will have to be a call to action.

Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media

Burnaby brewery decontaminating masks for front-line workers

By Chris Campbell, Burnaby Now | May 6, 2020, 

N95 respiratory face masks | Submitted

A Burnaby brewery has repurposed new brewery equipment to decontaminate N95 masks.

Steamworks Brewery took delivery of its steam-driven chamber pasteurizer days before the onset of the COVID-19 crisis.

It was for laboratory use in new product development and for preventing re-fermentation from occurring in beers with high sugar content such as radler and barrel-aged beers. The chamber pasteurizer looks like a big upright freezer.

Steamworks Brewery CEO Eli Gershkovitch, long a proponent of steam, was fascinated by work being done by the Battelle Organization and Stanford University on decontaminating existing masks as a way of dealing with the worldwide shortage of new N95 masks, especially for first-line health-care providers. 

Steamworks Brewery took delivery of its steam-driven chamber pasteurizer days before the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. Photo submitted

Using protocols developed by Stanford University and approved by the CDC, the Steamworks pasteurizer is capable of decontaminating 1,200 N95 masks per cycle using either steam or hydrogen peroxide vapour (HPV).

“With steam, our pasteurizer can decontaminate 1,200 masks per cycle and approximately 10,000 N95 masks per day. Using steam, each mask can be decontaminated up to three times,” Gershkovitch said. “With hydrogen peroxide vapour, we can do about 5,000 masks per day, but the masks can be decontaminated a maximum of 10 times before needing to be discarded. Thus, choose steam for speed while HPV is preferred for greater reusability.”

Health Canada has confirmed that any registered hospital in Canada can use the Steamworks pasteurizer for decontaminating masks without further regulatory authorization.

Gershkovitch is offering the Steamworks pasteurizer to any accredited hospital or health authority in British Columbia and in neighbouring Washington State that is facing a shortage of N95 masks, at no cost.

Burnaby Now

BC Schools to have ‘full re-launch in September’

Smaller class sizes, spacing between desks, health checks, greater cleaning recommended

By Jeremy Hainsworth | May 6, 2020

B.C.’s public sector and post secondary could see a “full re-launch in September,” B.C.’s deputy minister of health said May 6.

Stephen Brown said schools could return to initially limited operations with guidelines incorporating core hygiene and gathering rules.

There could also be a partial return for K-12 and a mix of online and in-class for post-secondary facilities in September.

“We will continue to plan for the full resumption of class in September,” Premier John Horgan said, adding it is vital parents feel safe about their children’s return to school as part of “the new normal.”

“We want to make sure we can safely get kids back into the classroom,” he said. “It’s not just about reading, writing and ‘rithmatic.”

Further, the premier acknowledged, children want to see their friends.

“There’s an overwhelming desire to get kids interacting with each other,” Horgan said.

The Ministry of Education released a staged plan for return to full in-class instruction.

Those are:

• Stage 5 - Suspend all in-class instruction for all grades and students. Remote and online learning for all students;

• Stage 4  - Current stage - In-class learning for children of essential service workers and vulnerable students. Remote and online learning continues for most students;

• Stage 3 - In-class learning for students in kindergarten to Grade 5 on a part-time basis. Access to in-class learning as needed for grades 6 to 12 on a part-time basis. Remote and online learning continues to be available for students;

• Stage 2 - In-class learning for all students in elementary school (K to 7) on a full-time basis. In-class learning for secondary students (grades 8 to 12) on a part-time basis. Remote and online learning continues to be available for secondary students, and;

• Stage 1 - return to full in-class instruction.

Health Minister Adrian Dix, the Ministry of Education will address details of what openings might look like in coming days.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said school districts would have to determine how best to implement policies in their areas.

Brown, Dix and Henry presented the information on B.C.’s Restart Plan to a technical briefing and news conference.

B.C.’s COVID-19 Go-Forward ... by BIV on Scribd

Brown said Minister of Education Rob Fleming is working on the details “to ensure students and staff are safe and stay well.”

But, stressed Henry, not all classroom instruction ended in the lockdown period.

In-class instruction had remained for some students, including those of essential workers, Henry said.

She said that could expand in June with a greater expansion in September.

Among issues schools will be looking at, Brown said, include:

• routine daily screening protocol for all staff and students;

• routine and frequent cleaning;

• smaller class sizes, increased space between desks, alternating attendance arrangements, frequent hand washing, wearing non-medical masks for group activities and sports, and limiting group sizes;

• clear policies for children, youth and staff who have symptoms of a cold, flu, or COVID-19, with any coughing or sneezing not attending school or taking part in extracurricular activities and sports;

• planning over the summer for increased use of remote online learning, especially for high school children; and

• early arrival and self-isolation for 14 days of international students for both public system and post-secondary institutions.

Brown said similar cleaning rules and attendance restrictions would apply to post-secondary institutions.

Henry said she sees no utility in taking students’ temperatures as they arrive at school each day.

Rather, she said, students would be asked how they are feeling.

“It’s about a health-symptom screening that we all need to do,” Henry said.

Horgan said the province is working with the B.C. Recreation and Parks Association to determine what kids sports can take place this summer.

He said Fleming has been working with the BC Teachers Federation and school trustees.

B.C. School Trustees Association president Stephanie Higginson said school boards will be working with the Ministry of Health guidelines to ensure a safe return to school in a modified manner before the end of June.

She said the government has worked very collaboratively with stakeholders to ensure everything is done safely.

jhainsworth@glaciermedia.ca

@jhainswo

The meat of the matter: don’t expect shortages in Canada

By Sylvain Charlebois | April 28, 2020

Shutterstock


As COVID-19 ravages communities across North America, many analysts believe meat-packing plants, where employees work close to each other, are the next focal point of the spread of the virus.

We’re likely in the worst of it now. More than a dozen North American meat-packing plants have closed over the last two weeks, with at least five in Canada.

The big meat processing operators in Canada have been affected.

Maple Leaf Foods had four plants affected by COVID-19, and two are back in operation. Protocols are being carefully followed to put plants back in operation as quickly as possible. Closures can be disruptive and, especially for farming, disastrous.


Olymel, controlled by La Coop Fédérée, operates several pork processing plants. Two of its plants were closed for two weeks.

Given the intense production cycle in hog farming, animals needed to be harvested. While other sectors struggle to manage waste, pork processors made vertical co-ordination work so no animals were euthanized.

Throughout the crisis, we should expect to see more of these scenarios erupt.

But we shouldn’t expect meat shortages.

Meat consumption across the globe is down during the pandemic, relieving some of the pressure on meat packers.

The futures market is telling the story, especially for cattle and hogs, as farmers are being paid less for their livestock. Inventories are high enough to provide comfort to the supply chain. And meat sales in Canada have been unusually high since mid-March, when most Canadians were home.

We expect peak barbecue season to be flattened this year, again alleviating pressure on the entire meat supply chain.

But beef, and one packing plant in particular, offers a different story.

The cattle industry has always had a unique culture. Beef and cattle processing in Canada are dominated by a few large players. Cargill Foods operates in High River, Alberta, and Guelph, Ontario. Lakeside Packers in Brooks, Alberta, is operated by JBS Canada, part of a Brazil-based multinational. Both are private companies and tend not to be too forthcoming.

The Cargill plant in High River has been the focus of much scrutiny in recent days.

Unlike other plants affected by COVID-19, Cargill chose to keep operating in High River after seeing employees contract the virus. But it opted to slow down production to allow for cleaning and physical spacing.

Reports now say more than 350 COVID-19 cases have been identified in households linked to the High River plant. That’s a problem.

Similar circumstances are being reported in the United States.

A few issues merit attention. First, many of our plants need to be retrofitted, particularly in the beef industry. Since the beginning of the crisis, all plants less than 10 years old in Canada have avoided COVID-19. That’s a sign. The virus could eventually get in, but modern infrastructure can play a significant preventive role.

Because of automation, robotics and modern maintenance, most European plants have so far been spared the virus. Those with issues have been in operation for decades, with patchwork and provisional operating solutions.

The high-volume, low-margin nature of the agri-food sector puts tremendous pressure on the entire supply chain, particularly in North America. Price volatility also makes things more complicated. There’s barely any room for capital investments.

The High River plant is 31 years old. The Brooks plant is more than 40 years old.

The region needs more processing, either with newer facilities or with more players. But the economics are very poor for any new entries.

The other issue is worker mobility. Many plants hire workers who commute by bus from urban centres to rural plants. Complying with physical distancing rules on a bus can be complicated, if not impossible.

Part of management’s decisions to deal with the pandemic should be making the safety of the community a priority. Maple Leaf, Olymel and other companies made the right decisions to temporarily close facilities to clean and establish safety measures.

Employees at the Cargill plant have continuously, if awkwardly, voiced concerns about work safety. Despite teleconferences and a few interviews, Cargill has failed to be reassuring about the safety of its employees.

COVID-19 will ultimately force management to think more broadly about employee safety, in and out of the plant. But Cargill’s efforts now to mitigate risks and keep employees and the community safe don’t appear to be working.

Meanwhile, employees are talking to the media about concerns while the number of cases in the community continues to grow.

Not wanting to close the plant even temporarily probably makes sense for ranchers who deal with Cargill. But public health and the safety of employees must be priorities.

In 2012, XL Foods in Brooks closed for several days amid the largest food recall in Canadian history. Canadians continued to get their beef while prices remained stable. So we know the market can handle a temporary closure.

In the end, the meat processing industry will be fine, if not perfect, and Canadians will get their meat supplies. •

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is senior director of the agri-food analytics lab and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University.

BUSINESS IN VANCOUVER 

14 mutations found in SARS-CoV-2: One strain may be more easily spread

by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress

A colorized scanning electron micrograph of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Credit: NIAID

A team of researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS and the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and Department of Surgery has found 14 mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, one of which they suspect might be more easily spread. In the interest of speedy dissemination of findings, the group has uploaded their paper to the bioRxiv preprint server rather than waiting for peer review at another journal.

The work involved analyzing the genomes of the virus found in 6,000 infected people from around the globe. They focused most specifically on the virus genes that are responsible for producing the "spike protein," which is the mechanism the virus uses to attach to human cells. In so doing, they found 14 mutations, but one they named D614G (also known as G614) stood out because it was found in almost all samples outside of China. It was also particularly notable because it appeared to replace a prior mutation called D614. They also noted that in the original outbreak in China, there were only D614 mutations. It was only after the virus began appearing in Europe that the G614 mutation emerged. They suggest that the fact that the G614 virus took over from the prior mutation could mean it is more easily spread. Notably, after the mutation appeared in Europe, the G614 mutation began appearing in samples from other sites around the world, suggesting that this new strain is behind the global pandemic.

Others in the medical science field have expressed skepticism about the suggestions made by the team, insisting that it is far too soon to assume that any of the various strains of the virus are any more contagious than the original strain in China. Some have even suggested that the reason the strain with the G614 mutation has spread so far and wide is because it happened to infect regions that did not begin mitigation efforts in the earliest days of the pandemic. In either case, more work is required to ascertain whether any strains are more contagious than any other, and also to determine if the virus mutates at a rate that could outpace vaccine development.

---

More information: Bette Korber et al. Spike mutation pipeline reveals the emergence of a more transmissible form of SARS-CoV-2, bioRxiv (2020). DOI: 10.1101/2020.04.29.069054

Climate change could reawaken Indian Ocean El Nino

by University of Texas at Austin

Evidence of an ice age Indian Ocean El Niño was found in the chemistry of these 21,000 year old foram shells by Thirumalai in 2017, when he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics. The researchers now think the processes driving Indian Ocean El Niño during global cooling were very similar to those under global warming. Credit: Kaustubh Thirumalai

Global warming is approaching a tipping point that during this century could reawaken an ancient climate pattern similar to El Niño in the Indian Ocean, new research led by scientists from The University of Texas at Austin has found.

If it comes to pass, floods, storms and drought are likely to worsen and become more regular, disproportionately affecting populations most vulnerable to climate change.

Computer simulations of climate change during the second half of the century show that global warming could disturb the Indian Ocean's surface temperatures, causing them to rise and fall year to year much more steeply than they do today. The seesaw pattern is strikingly similar to El Niño, a climate phenomenon that occurs in the Pacific Ocean and affects weather globally.

"Our research shows that raising or lowering the average global temperature just a few degrees triggers the Indian Ocean to operate exactly the same as the other tropical oceans, with less uniform surface temperatures across the equator, more variable climate, and with its own El Niño," said lead author Pedro DiNezio, a climate scientist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, a research unit of the UT Jackson School of Geosciences.

According to the research, if current warming trends continue, an Indian Ocean El Niño could emerge as early as 2050.

The results, which were published May 6 in the journal Science Advances, build on a 2019 paper by many of the same authors who found evidence of a past Indian Ocean El Niño hidden in the shells of microscopic sea life, called forams, that lived 21,000 years ago—the peak of the last ice age when the Earth was much cooler.

To show whether an Indian Ocean El Niño can occur in a warming world, the scientists analyzed climate simulations, grouping them according to how well they matched present-day observations. When global warming trends were included, the most accurate simulations were those showing an Indian Ocean El Niño emerging by 2100.

Rainfall simulations in the Indian Ocean under future global warming show more extreme periods of deluge and drought. According to the University of Texas-led study, the climate swings are the result of Indian Ocean El Niño and La Niña that could emerge within the 21st century if today's greenhouse warming trends continue. Credit: Pedro DiNezio

"Greenhouse warming is creating a planet that will be completely different from what we know today, or what we have known in the 20th century," DiNezio said.

The latest findings add to a growing body of evidence that the Indian Ocean has potential to drive much stronger climate swings than it does today.

Co-author Kaustubh Thirumalai, who led the study that discovered evidence of the ice age Indian Ocean El Niño, said that the way glacial conditions affected wind and ocean currents in the Indian Ocean in the past is similar to the way global warming affects them in the simulations.

"This means the present-day Indian Ocean might in fact be unusual," said Thirumalai, who is an assistant professor at the University of Arizona.

The Indian Ocean today experiences very slight year-to-year climate swings because the prevailing winds blow gently from west to east, keeping ocean conditions stable. According to the simulations, global warming could reverse the direction of these winds, destabilizing the ocean and tipping the climate into swings of warming and cooling akin to the El Niño and La Niña climate phenomena in the Pacific Ocean. The result is new climate extremes across the region, including disruption of the monsoons over East Africa and Asia.

Thirumalai said that a break in the monsoons would be a significant concern for populations dependent on the regular annual rains to grow their food.

For Michael McPhaden, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who pioneered research into tropical climate variability, the paper highlights the potential for how human-driven climate change can unevenly affect vulnerable populations.

"If greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current trends, by the end of the century, extreme climate events will hit countries surrounding the Indian Ocean, such as Indonesia, Australia and East Africa with increasing intensity," said McPhaden, who was not involved in the study. "Many developing countries in this region are at heightened risk to these kinds of extreme events even in the modern climate."Indian Ocean phenomenon spells climate trouble for Australia

More information: Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay7684 , advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/19/eaay7684

Kaustubh Thirumalai et al. An El Niño Mode in the Glacial Indian Ocean?, Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology (2019). DOI: 10.1029/2019PA003669

Journal information: Science Advances