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Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

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Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#71
post #2

On the bright side, a disruption in supply may teach us what we really need, and what we don't need. Maybe after this breakout we'll realize the importance of slowing down, consuming less, and resting more.

Because that's what happens in the aftermath of a scarcity event; all those people who were hung out to dry don't push harder for more in the future, and those who had it all decide to take less.

This strikes me as child-level naivete.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#72
post #61

We really need to get our factories out of China. This is a country that hid the coronavirus case for 2-3 weeks, let 5 million Wuhan residents leave the city, doctored numbers, then most recently had government press try to spin the disease as if it didn’t come out of Wuhan, but rather somewhere other countries!! And they are actively Forcing uigher population into crippled factories in eastern China to replace migra…

The US on a federal level 'has done nothing and is all out of ideas' as the memes go, except perhaps suppressing states to do their own testing. This is in a way inverse of what happened in China and arguably worse because in China when the federal-level authority caught wind of the scale of the problem they dropped the hammer so hard the whole world is still ringing. The US on the other hand knows there's an epidemi…

Well the admin was very quick to shut down travel from China.

And the Trump did order masks from 3M early on.

I don't deny that there has been a display of incompetence to date be careful not to let partisanship blind you into denying credit where it is due.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#73
post #54

This is the cruel and predictable result of a society that has meticulously and senselessly offshored/outsourced most its industrial capacity. If your country can't manufacture, from raw materials , all the electrical/electronic/mechanical components, the tooling, the equipment, and the chemicals (industrial and pharmaceutical alike) it needs to keep everything running, you're dependent on these hyper-fragile and con…

Assuming that this travels into the country wouldn't the same impact be observed as areas of the country with particular specializations were affected? I don't know how one could prevent supply chain disruptions, they'd just come a little later than sooner.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#74
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US on a federal level 'has done nothing and is all out of ideas' as the memes go, except perhaps suppressing states to do their own testing. This is in a way inverse of what happened in China and arguably worse because in China when the federal-level authority caught wind of the scale of the problem they dropped the hammer so hard the whole world is still ringing. The US on the other hand knows there's an epidemi…

Well the admin was very quick to shut down travel from China. And the Trump did order masks from 3M early on. I don't deny that there has been a display of incompetence to date be careful not to let partisanship blind you into denying credit where it is due.

ha, no worries :) i'm sitting across the pond with my own share of incompetencies and complacencies abound. it's just hard to ignore what the US is (not) doing because it looks to be on a whole another level.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#75

We really need to get our factories out of China. This is a country that hid the coronavirus case for 2-3 weeks, let 5 million Wuhan residents leave the city, doctored numbers, then most recently had government press try to spin the disease as if it didn’t come out of Wuhan, but rather somewhere other countries!! And they are actively Forcing uigher population into crippled factories in eastern China to replace migra…

Why is this kind of comment allowed on HN? I see no difference between this and a comment a person paid by some government/organisation hostile to China would write. This person is spewing nationalistic hate without any sources and arguments. Almost nothing in the comment is falsifiable. Can dang elaborate on this issue? Are comments of this kind usually removed or not? I'm thinking of writing a browser extension whi…

This was all verifiable in real time and is consistent with the behavior of authoritarian regimes. You want to pretend China isn't interning Uigurs as well?

Hell, that doctor whistleblower who ended up dead from the virus was officially "admonished" and forced to publicaly apologize for "spreading rumors".

The world isn't the Disney movie land that most Americans grew up. Plenty of organized evil exists throughout the world.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not concerned about the food supply, I am a bit concerned about logistical problems of getting food to grocers if we have massive infection rates. This would hopefully be short lived though, as workers out could be back at work within 2-3 weeks. We'd just have to hope they don't all get it at once. I hope grocers are taking measures to prevent vendors from interacting with each other, and making sure their loadin…

That brings up the question, Should we be cleaning products/ food brought home? I mean, normally I will wash produce but what about everything else?

From a BI article, "In general, because of poor survivability of these coronaviruses on surfaces, there is likely very low risk of spread from products or packaging that are shipped over a period of days or weeks at ambient temperatures," the CDC said on its website.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really like to start seeing less of this sort of comment on Hacker News. It's not even close to literally true.

What part? “This is a country that hid the coronavirus case for 2-3 weeks” That’s the same as the USA refusing to test everyone in sufficient quantities right? South Korea is testing 10k per day, has the US completed even 10k tests yet? “let 5 million Wuhan residents leave the city” That’s every state apart from perhaps 1 section on NY city and small parts of Seattle. “doctored numbers” Thats the refusing to test thi…

The difference is that in the US all of this is due to incompetence, but given the nature of our laws and society people are free to point out the shortcomings of the response.

In China you are publicly admonished and/or disappeared for going against the official government narrative. That is a stark difference between not just Western/Chinese government, but culture, and cannot be underestimated. It leads to a totally different society and hopefully because of freedom of speech people will be more likely to take protective measures sooner as they realize that the government is responding poorly.

Also you're much less likely to keep the majority of the population ignorant of an outbreak when you don't have a legal and judicial speech suppression machine. Yes, their authoritarian measures were effective in containing the spread (allegedly, all sources afaik from China have gone silent), but they did spend at least a month hiding the outbreak and keeping people from talking about it, for reasons I won't go into.

Not all governments are created equal. Not all cultures are the same. That's pure fantasy brought about by decades of indoctrination in the west.

Note that this isn't just blind nationalism. I fully recognize that under these circumstances the extreme authoritarianism in China may prove to be the best containment measure out of any other country short of North Korea. Good luck convincing 360MM Americans to stay home for a month.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#79
post #54

This is the cruel and predictable result of a society that has meticulously and senselessly offshored/outsourced most its industrial capacity. If your country can't manufacture, from raw materials , all the electrical/electronic/mechanical components, the tooling, the equipment, and the chemicals (industrial and pharmaceutical alike) it needs to keep everything running, you're dependent on these hyper-fragile and con…

Assuming that this travels into the country wouldn't the same impact be observed as areas of the country with particular specializations were affected? I don't know how one could prevent supply chain disruptions, they'd just come a little later than sooner.

But if most industrialized countries had retained their mfg expertise some factories would be active while some idle and there could be some kind of staggered affect as the interruption courses it’s way in and out.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#80

I had a phone stolen a couple of weeks ago, and initially I was trying to buy a new phone outright (ended up filing a claim and having my new one overnighted, but lack of SMS access would have prevented me from doing my job, hence the urgency). None of the local Verizon stores had any phones (11 Pro Max) in stock (they explicitly said it was due to China supply chain), but Best Buy did.

I have nothing against you, but I wish more people would get burn by the sms 2fa without backup/alternatives. Maybe at some point we will realize that it's a terrible idea.

I actually agree with you. Aside from apps that don't offer anything other than SMS 2FA, I always opt for TOTP-based 2FA. However, one compromise I've made is with Authy: they back up your saved config, but you must SMS verify (or have it installed on a 2nd device to verify a new device)
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