Global supply chain issues have clearly stuck around, and we're relying on another country on another continent to provide something that would classify as an emergency good. You tell me how that makes sense.
The downvotes are cute, this is a very legitimate concern though. There's nothing wrong with wondering why China releasing a virus is just an "oopsie."
It's a tall order to fix 40 to 50 years of global offshoring in a 10 months. If COVID has taught me anything, I believe we are more likely to just grit our teeth and put up with the costs than actually try and fix the issue in the future. Americans will never buy (or could possibly afford) domestically manufactured goods. There is already fervor at increased food prices due to the labor price increases all across the food chain; you want to do the same to cups and plates? It would never be politically successful.
>The downvotes are cute, this is a very legitimate concern though. There's nothing wrong with wondering why China releasing a virus is just an "oopsie."
Because it's not a productive conversation. 1) Whether it's an "oopsie" or not, Americans were still unprepared. 2) If it's not an oopsie, what are you going to do? Invade China on a hunch? 3) Given the history of respiratory diseases in China (e.g. SARS), and the growth of China in the global economy, isn't it more likely that is SARS 2 ever occurred it would be global in nature? This isn't the first time China has had to deal with a respiratory virus.
That's... not what I asked for. We're talking respiratory cloth masks here, not the global economy.
Our discussion will be more productive if you don't put words in my mouth.
You're really trying to ignore the obvious red flags. Respiratory masks for US consumption being made in China is not a result of globalization. It's just corporate greed hiding behind virtue signals.
Where do you expect these masks to be made? In people's backyards? When you are talking about suppling millions of masks, you are talking about the global economy. The tooling that is used to quickly ramp production to that scale is because you can take already existing systems that are used to develop clothing and other apparel and rapidly convert them to making masks. If you don't have that, then where do you expect it to come from? If you don't already have people working in factory, making clothes, where will you find the people to start making masks? Then lets say you do find these people, on very short notice. You are now paying them american labor prices; will your potential customers just choose to source from overseas anyways?
I'm not putting words in your mouth; maybe you aren't fully aware the effort it would take to ship millions of anything on such a short timescale without having the existing infrastructure to do it; especially if that infrastructure hasn't existed for a very long time. You are putting forth a very difficult problem very matter of factly.
It's an error to imply they were making this assumption in the first place. I, too, am baffled that two years into a pandemic, any tests are coming from China. Didn't the whole thing _start_ there?