Systemic failure of supply chains due to the Coronavirus Pandemic

[Health and Medicine]

If half your international workers are down with the flu (I'm "just" going off the flu symptoms here)... your company grinds to a halt.

What worries me is that the world's increasingly-interdependent medical goods supply chains operate very leanly and with comparatively lower stockpiles than we used to.

And any given country, the US for example, is less self-sufficient than ever before (in terms of established supply chains currently in use).

So any major disruption in the production and global distribution of medical goods will be very readily felt by hospitals.

And no one is prepared for that with adequate contingencies in place.

Huge amounts of basic medical supplies are manufactured in Asia.

China- masks, PPE, some fluid/ fluid bags, scapals/ instruments, wound dressings, IV machines/ mobile xray/ other machines;

South America- Certain IV fluids, medications, some anti viral/ antibiotic meds;

India- outer protection bag that some IV fluids are packed in

If the supply chain were to be interupted- at any point in the world where medical equipment is produced- that is almost unfathomable.

Germany gets 80% of it's pharmacies from foreign countries, most of it from China and India......

Outsourcing (globalizing) medicine is a disaster recipipe beyond pandemics, when you actively make yourself dependent.