[This post is from a series written during the first days of the COVID crisis.]
The most remarkable thing about this pandemic is the lack of planning.
Sure. It’s easy and fashionable to grouse, but really, look at the contrast of leverage and “just in time” thinking, and the need to prepare.
It’s all math.
I have X manufacturing facilities. These factories have X output.
The mathematical modeling of a crisis (let’s say…hmm…a pandemic) says we need X number of items.
Compare X to X to X, and how are we doing?
Simple.
But why didn’t this happen?
Therein lies the tale.
Point the finger at government, point the finger at industry, point the finger at people so relentlessly preoccupied with their own productivity, that they don’t bother to connect to their place in the whole.
Point the finger at ourselves.
Save it for private time, or your Netflix hour, but when it comes to ourselves and our neighbors, let’s have some scientifically-based informative responsibility.
Let’s believe in planning for the next crisis as opposed to hearing cable pundits screaming about skies that are falling, with counterpoint that the skies aren’t really falling, and rebuttal that you really shouldn’t care anyway, just get back to consuming things.
If this is the greatest economy in the world, let’s get our house in order.
Pandemics are an apex event for a globalized system and will continue to stay with us.
“Just-in-time”manufacturing makes us all depend on each other in the moment.
Lungs, which we all share, tend to blister in an overly aggressive auto-immune reaction to new viruses.*
So, you need plans for adapting ventilators, you need masks and protective gowns, you need face shields, and the fortitude to have them ready and available in the first place.**
What part did we not know?
*“How Blood Sugar Can Trigger a Deadly Immune Response in the Flu and Possibly COVID-19,” Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-blood-sugar-can-trigger-a-deadly-immune-response-in-the-flu-and-possibly-covid-191/
**“Turning sleep apnea machines into ventilators,” Berkeley Engineering, https://engineering.berkeley.edu/news/2020/04/turning-sleep-apnea-machines-into-ventilators/