Ultimately, yes, it's important as to where it came from, for many reasons. I only said I didn't care in the current context because whether it came from China or Chile doesn't matter to where things stand today or what we do going forward in terms of mitigating the spread and mortality. Although it did come from China and they made some major missteps in handling it in the early, early stages, once the virus made the jump to a human and it started spreading, the goose was pretty well cooked. All they could have done and all we could have done when it first showed up here was delay it to buy enough time to better prepare. This virus is more contagious than most and it only kills a small percentage of those it infects, meaning there were several "generations" of infections and likely thousands of cases before anyone knew anything was going on. By that time, a global spread was likely inevitable, although they certainly could have mitigated it.
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Hopefully one change will be to our supply chains and reliance on China for critical prescription drugs and their ingredients amongst so many other critical items
I think that's one thing that can be counted on, although it will take some time for the shift to fully occur. I work in the IT industry and a huge percentage of the gadgets I sell are made in China - I work on commission and I'm likely to be in a world of hurt in a month or two. I think most manufacturers will be looking to diversify where their products are made and will avoid putting their eggs in one basket - our management has already made comments that this will be a long term effect. Hardly any of that production will be coming back to the US, but it's doubtful they'll rely solely on one country going forward. At least until this passes from recent memory - people tend to get complacent when they haven't had to deal with a crisis in a long time.
Posted 03/12/2020 9:10 pm
