Unable to get through, families drove to the clinic, lining up on the sidewalk as the smell of fast food drifted from the Hardee’s next door.Īs the staff tended to the sick, a chilling pattern emerged: 99% of the patients either worked at the local Tyson Foods meatpacking plant or lived with someone who did. The clinic’s interpreters, fielding calls in multiple languages, couldn’t keep up. Overnight, the number of cases in urgent care doubled, then tripled and quadrupled. Sharon Duclos, the co-medical director of the Peoples Community Health Clinic, waited anxiously, hoping that the deadly new virus would somehow spare her city.
Outside the weather was getting warmer, but the streets were eerily empty, almost like when the ocean pulls out all the water before pounding a wave onto the shore. His wife tried to help, but the man, who butchered hog carcasses for a living, was suddenly too weak to get out of bed.Ī few miles away, Congolese immigrants, short of breath and struggling with coughing fits, cocooned themselves in blankets and leaned over steaming pots of lemon, ginger and garlic. In an apartment on the west side of town, a Karenni refugee from Myanmar woke up one morning in April gasping for air. The coronavirus crept through Waterloo, Iowa, quietly at first. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. By Michael Grabell and Bernice Yeung Photography by Taylor Glascock December 21, 2020 But by the time the pandemic hit, a transformed industry had assembled a workforce from the most vulnerable parts of the world.
Meatpacking was once a path to the middle class in Waterloo, where workers led the fight for civil rights.
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