> The impact outside of the meat plant seems minimal.
COVID-19 has a significant incubation period and a large number of infections are asymptomatic and even with moderate symptoms people often won't qualify for the limited testing being done. The upshot being that unless there is a nexus with another highly-tested subcommunity in the same community, an outbreak that occurs rapidly and is detected in one subcommunity (in which impacts might be visible sooner through testing) that is disproportionately tested will take several weeks before it has significant visible impacts in the broader community. And by the time it does, it will be impossible to contain.
But those broader impacts are pretty much inevitable unless the those exposed to the outbreak were strictly quarantined from the broader community.
Rural communities with minimal testing also tend to lack their own hospital / ICU resources, so outbreaks in those communities also tend to unexpectedly deplete resources in nearby cities. Sometimes these are also counted as deaths in the city rather than the rural area the case originated.
COVID-19 has a significant incubation period and a large number of infections are asymptomatic and even with moderate symptoms people often won't qualify for the limited testing being done. The upshot being that unless there is a nexus with another highly-tested subcommunity in the same community, an outbreak that occurs rapidly and is detected in one subcommunity (in which impacts might be visible sooner through testing) that is disproportionately tested will take several weeks before it has significant visible impacts in the broader community. And by the time it does, it will be impossible to contain.
But those broader impacts are pretty much inevitable unless the those exposed to the outbreak were strictly quarantined from the broader community.