McCue-Weil Leigh, Knight Margaret, Driscoll Maryellen, Jenkins Paul, Sorensen Julie
Department of Mechanical Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA USA.
University of California, Davis, CA USA.
Mathematica (N Y). 2023;2(1):223-241. doi: 10.1007/s44007-023-00043-4. Epub 2023 Feb 22.
In March of 2020, with the full magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic yet to be seen, Costa and Martin released a report through the Economic Policy Institute noting that "To prevent infections and the spread of COVID-19 on farms, farm employers should be planning and implementing safety measures to protect their employees" (Costa D, Martin P, Coronavirus and farmworkers: farm employment, safety issues, and the H-2A guestworker program, Economic Policy Institute, https://www.epi.org/publication/coronavirus-and-farmworkers-h-2a/, 2020). The report goes on to provide multiple observations recognizing the seasonal nature of farm work, effects increased unemployment may have on the workforce, industry dependence on H-2A visa farm workers, impact school closings would have on worker availability, and includes recommendations for safety equipment, social distancing, as well as worker housing and transportation. This paper focuses on the worker housing component of those recommendations and describes an effort to rapidly develop and deploy a computationally efficient, web-based, low-fidelity mathematical model of COVID-19 spread in dormitory style housing to support education and mitigation strategies for the historically underserved farmworker community.
2020年3月，在新冠疫情的严重程度尚未完全显现之时，科斯塔和马丁通过经济政策研究所发布了一份报告，指出“为防止新冠病毒在农场感染和传播，农场雇主应规划并实施安全措施以保护其员工”（科斯塔D、马丁P，《冠状病毒与农场工人：农场就业、安全问题及H-2A外来务工人员计划》，经济政策研究所，https://www.epi.org/publication/coronavirus-and-farmworkers-h-2a/，2020年）。该报告接着进行了多项观察，认识到农场工作的季节性、失业率上升可能对劳动力产生的影响、行业对H-2A签证农场工人的依赖、学校关闭对工人可获得性的影响，并包括了关于安全设备、社交距离以及工人住房和交通的建议。本文聚焦于这些建议中的工人住房部分，并描述了一项努力，即快速开发并部署一个计算效率高、基于网络的、低精度的新冠病毒在宿舍式住房中传播的数学模型，以支持为历史上服务不足的农场工人社区制定教育和缓解策略。
