1. American Companies Moved Their Supply Lines and Manufacturing to China

Not one US corporation was dragged into China at gunpoint to do their manufacturing there. Not one US citizen or CEO was held hostage to get American companies to move their plants to China.  They all did so on their own out of greed pure and simple. China has cheap labor, highly skilled people and a work ethic they wanted to exploit for their own ends.

Their inability to respond to a sudden crisis is due to the fact that they moved their supply chains a great distance away to a foreign country and the supply chains are designed to deliver goods on a just in time basis. The whole purpose of just in time supply chains is to avoid carrying excess capacity and inventory, because it is more profitable not to do so. Instead of listening to news media BS, research it. If you want in-depth analysis, look up white papers on it.  Its not hard and you will actually self educate, which you should do anyhow.  Here are two links to get you started.

Why Are Supply Chains Becoming More Fragile?

From falsified medicines to storage mishaps: the fragile state of drug supply chains

Katherine Eban, Investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author of the book "Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom" in testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in July 2019 reported "The book takes readers into the overseas manufacturing plants where the majority of our low-cost generic medicine is made. It reveals endemic fraud and dire conditions in an industry where companies routinely falsify data and circumvent principles of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit. To report the book, I traveled to four continents, interviewed hundreds of sources and obtained over 20,000 pages of confidential FDA documents." Its impossible to write a well researched book on the problems in making our medicines China without the very companies knowing about the problems since they themselves live with and perpetuate the problems every day.

When an American company willingly goes into China they gain access to the largest market in the world (1.439 billion people) and certainly one of the lowest cost and highly skilled manufacturing bases in the world.  THEY DO NOT HAVE TO GO FOR ANY OTHER REASON THAN TO MAKE MONEY. Whether they sell anything in domestic China today or not they still benefit from high quality products that can be produced at low costs and come with a significant distribution infrastructure to deliver their products worldwide. Any company claiming they did not know how things work in China is either lying or the CEO is an idiot. Knowing that the Chinese may take advantage of them clearly was not a deterrent. In fact if they lost intellectual property as a result, the CEO and the Board approving the move should be sued by the shareholders for their malfeasance in taking risks with the company's capital, and for the damage caused to the company's reputation by failing its customers in time of need, the American people.

The potential to make a buck and save a buck, greed for an improved bottom line trumped everything. Trading in another country is not a right of any kind, and whoever says it is, is simply lying, or they are spreading an even bigger propaganda lie, that of globalization and the desire to spread freedom and democracy (and here.) Moreover, you will read about complaints that China is holding down the wages of its workers to remain competitive. You can bet your bottom dollar if China's wages had gone up every single US company would have gone to the next dictatorship that beats its workers silly to keep prices low.  Forget the nonsense that they care.  They may only care when it gets noticed. Nobody believes in integrity or loyalty when corporations are involved, as this link shows.

To try and pin the supply shortage on the government is nonsense. Where the government could have prepared was to make sure there is sufficient capacity in the event of a crisis. The Jerusalem Post talks about it in this article advising Israel is "purchasing thousands of respiratory machines, and they are meant to arrive in the country by mid-May."  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel is using every means it has to secure medical equipment to help patients during the pandemic. He added that all health services in the world face shortages due to the rapid and unexpected nature of COVID-19.  An Israeli doctor working in Israel suggested "people over 60 in Italy may no longer be assisted due to the shortages."

2. China Wears Prada Over Dirty Underwear

China has a lot of fantastic infrastructure. But underneath the futuristic face many Chinese citizens maintain 3rd world behaviors.  The place is dirty and no where close the the level of cleanliness in the US. In a previous article I pointed out the fact that a relative visited China for an extended time and traveled on overnight trains. She said all night she could hear people clearing their noses, covering one nostril with their finger and blowing discharge from their noses onto the floor out of their compartment. In the morning the curtains of the train compartments and floors were covered in nasal mucus and phlegm which she described as "disgusting."

Want to know how to spread disease quickly? Spit wherever you want and blow your nose wherever you are standing with one finger onto the floor or whatever and never wash your hands or the soles of your shoes. Shop at at wet market like in Wuhan, then go home and walk all over your house and touch everything. Let your kids crawl on the floor.

Until all of China catches up to the rest of the developed world in terms of cleanliness and perhaps what they eat, expect outbreaks. No amount of propaganda can explain how China benefits its people from the damage done to them and its economy by Covid 19.

However the people in companies whose job it is to assess risk to their business could have taken into account the risks to the factories they produce their products in.  That would include risks as a result of a pandemic, especially since one only has to visit China to understand the cleanliness issue among other things. That type of risk assessment is somewhat esoteric, having known a Lloyd's pen who got clobbered insuring satellites with his group, but you would hope that with the increasing availability of information in the world someone could have built a statistical model that made it show up on their risk analysis radar.

3. China Challenges the Propaganda Narrative - So Create More Propaganda

Communism was not supposed to be able to become a player on the economic stage, because everyone knows communism does not work, right?  Its a shock to America's propaganda narrative that communist flavored capitalism could rival "free" enterprise. Now that China is making their version of capitalism work, America has to show its superiority. A poor nation with good ideas is making good. The fact that no one expected it and did not prepare for it is on the people who guessed wrong.

China is playing the cards it has in using its low cost labor and people hungry and willing to work hard to get ahead. The constant complaint about rights and oppressed people does not explain the increase in wealth and the development of their middle class in a short period of time. Propagandizing negatives has worked from time to time when beating up small countries with disadvantaged people and questionable leaders. But Vietnam, and now China and Russia challenge that behavior, so they have to be demonized to the maximum extent in preparation for greater aggression in the future. 

My bet is eventually the bully will be called to the street for a shootout. At some point the people being bullied get tired of it, and if they have been subject to it for a long time will reach a point where they get so tired of hearing the shit they will call it out, regardless of the outcome. Unless you operate under the absolute delusion that some god drives your ability to threaten others and miraculously cover you with a cloak of invincibility, you would do well to check your references. Vietnam is an example of fantasy meeting reality and ISIS is testimony that there are really people that believe Allah is guiding and protecting them.   For those of you who are not quite sure call up people who have lost children and relatives in Vietnam and the other wars America is perpetually involved in and ask them about god's cloak of invincibility. Then see if you can somehow talk them into equating their losses with the wonderful and bountiful joys of God's blessed hand calling them to a wonderful seat next to him in heaven.  There are actually people that believe that. Then there are those who just don't like getting pushed around by foreigners even more than they do not like their own government.  Expect those that you identify as your enemies to prepare for your aggression.  It may take a while, and when it happens, prepare to bury a lot of people.

4. The Military Industrial Complex Must "Turn" Its Inventory - Dollars For Death

China is a convenient target and the US military industrial complex needs conflict to fuel its weapons making business and to keep growing its budget.  Just like American companies, using just in time supply chains and avoiding excess capacity and inventory are profitable, but only to a point with weapons. The military needs a certain amount of inventory, but what good is inventory that does not "turn?"  The military industrial complex profits by destroying their inventory so they can make more.  Its called blowing things up and killing people.  The best thing about it, there is no salvage to deal with and the garbage left over is always in someone else's back yard.

The other problem with untested weapons is competing in an ever changing world, you have no idea if they work. Conflict is the test track for weapons and bodies are the check marks.  That will never change. I suppose creating killing fields around China could be used to send a message to China's leaders.  However if it were me, doing so would only encourage me to ramp up innovation of new weapon types much more quickly rather than capitulate to threats.  Only time will tell.

And I forgot to add one important thing.  Armament manufacturers have permanent suckers, I mean buyers available. Its you!  And their sales force are a bunch of lying thugs in the military industrial complex who only have to go around the world creating enemies who they then can use as an excuse to generate the need for weapons.  What a beautiful, scam.  Its so good, I have to add this picture again.  Sung to the tune of a partridge in a pear tree.

Here are a couple of links to their sales reps and suppliers.

• 10 Most Notorious Arms Dealers in Modern History

• TRENDS IN INTERNATIONAL ARMS TRANSFERS, 2017

• Global arms trade is a nearly 200 billion business and the US drives nearly 80% of it

5. The Press Are Complicit Flakes in the Propaganda Narrative

The press and media are financed by corporations and government provides them talking points.  One of the reasons the press cannot survive on a subscription model is because they have nothing worth listening to that people are willing to pay for.  They are also competing with their suppliers to take money out of peoples' disposable income window.  Corporations have mastered the art of lying for dollars, and so to compete, news/media organizations have to do the same.  CNN is in a mad rush to create propagandized news stories, or CNN flavored fictions they pass off as news.  If that fails to deliver the way they want at the very least if they can demonstrate the ability to move even a small part of the demographic in a certain direction.  Then they can run out and tell advertisers interested in that demographic that they can do so.

Pushing the Democrats is good for business because every platform they have stirs up controversy mainly because it is not something a significant number of people want, which stokes resistance and anger.  Examples include using Transvestites to school kids, letting alien criminals vote, promoting programs that cause conflict and division, and vilifying Republicans for American corporations' screw ups.  And this

New York Times Edits Headline Multiple Times After Democrats Block Aid to U.S. Workers