Now is the time to keep our cool
Now I’m going to tell you something you’re not going to like and I’m just as unhappy about it as you will be. The worst part of COVID-19 isn’t the virus but the disruption it will create in the supply chain of goods and services. The governmental injunction against panic buying will soon be wholly superfluous. Very soon, as early as next week perhaps, certainly within the next couple of months, shortages of products of every conceivable category will become critical and evident to everyone. In other words, very soon there will be nothing to panic buy.
The reason for this is because all supply chains live on the brink of a shortage disaster. This is an economic reality because of the expense involved for suppliers of all goods and services to maintain inventory. Inventories are kept at levels only sufficient to meet the immediate short term requirements, anything more is, under ordinary circumstances, an unnecessary expense. Once suppliers run out they run out. They can’t go into the back warehouse and get more.
We are all familiar with these supply interruptions on a small scale. Little things become unavailable because of minor hiccups in the supply chain such as a disrupting storm, a union strike, a bad crop. Any part of the chain that breaks down stops the supply dead in its tracks. We learn to do without and soon forget about it. It was a common phenomenon for our parents and grandparents during World War II.
But this is different. With a worldwide pandemic looming, product chains will get interrupted for everything at potentially every critical point. As it becomes necessary to isolate ourselves in city-wide quarantines, products from outside will become virtually nonexistent.
Because one of the most important mandates of the sickness that is the current administration, the single most important protocol remains the protection of the thinly skinned ego of child rapist Donald Trump. Mike Pence can’t talk for more than sixty seconds without heaping praise on the “dear leader” because everything, as usual, has to be about him,
Your duty to yourselves and your families is to ignore the self-serving propaganda coming from the White House and do what is best for yourselves. I would recommend everyone have at least a month’s supply on hand of all critical foods and products for yourselves and your pets. Be prepared to stay at home for protracted periods of time in the near future. Now might be a good time to start that diet and exercise program you have been promising yourself.
Don’t expect help from the Trump regime. The child-rapist Donald Trump will be looking for ways to use this disaster to his political, power-base and economic advantage. He doesn’t give a crap about you or your family.
I hope I’m wrong about this but I just don’t see how. The mathematics says we are in for very lean times. The good news is those times will be short, because everyone will be eager to return to normality as quickly as possible and the virus will eventually die out. But for now, don’t be surprised if there are no Fourth of July celebrations, no All Star Game, no Tokyo Olympics, no commonplace excuses for gatherings of crowds this Summer. Interesting times are ahead, but if we keep our cool we will survive them.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.