The chain itself has fragmented into specialized components that handle raw material development and acquisition, initial fabrication or synthesis, transportation and warehousing, final production and packaging, billing, labor management, market identification and facilitation and other parts of the process. Each piece improves its efficiency by focusing solely on its area of expertise without the need to address ancillary issues farther up or down the supply chain. Unfortunately, complexity and efficiency equal fragility. In a stable or predictably variable environment, the level of specialization that has developed allows for considerable improvements in productivity and lowers costs. It is, however, so carefully and specifically calibrated to its existing environment that when that environment is severely disrupted by an exogenous variable like a global pandemic, the same system cannot adjust or adapt as quickly as a more robust but less efficient version where overlapping efforts and capacities can be used to adjust to the new circumstances much more rapidly. The agricultural industry is an excellent example. At the same time that product shortages are appearing in grocery stores, some farmers are destroying animals and crops that they cannot sell. They cannot be sold as produced by those farmers because they were specifically produced for the food service industry, which has been decimated, and the sizes, grading systems, packaging and transportation infrastructure to move them to groceries instead of restaurants does not exist. An egg produced for liquid egg product, used in restaurants, cannot simply be quickly graded and repackaged in a carton and sold to a grocery distributor with whom the farmer has no relationship. Instead, it is destroyed. The same irony has arisen in the healthcare sector as massive layoffs are occurring at the very same time that hospitalization and viral caseloads are skyrocketing. When surgeries and other procedures that can be delayed are postponed to preserve protective equipment and hospital beds for pandemic patients and to reduce potential spread, the loss of revenue and of need for staff for the other surgeries and procedures actually exceeds the increase in revenue and staffing needs due to the virus. A secondary but related ripple effect is the difference in consumption patterns people exhibit when they are at home versus when they are not. The amount and types of food and beverage, the amount and type of clothing worn, transportation needs, recreational activities, internet connections, even bathroom habits all differ significantly when people are at home versus when they are at work, shopping, out for recreation or traveling for business or pleasure. In the same way the sizes, quality level, packaging and even fundamental characteristics of products and services used for one environment are unsuitable for the others.
∴ PROGNOSIS
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