Chapter 35 “was there any benefit from the COVIDs? outsourcing backfires”

Having the pleasure of meeting so many patients I got to know some of them quite well. Many had heart conditions brought about by stress and anxiety which is a profoundly serious killer and disease condition precedent. A recurring theme amongst many of them were the issues caused by corporate job cuts or “rationalizations” as the compliant human relations department referred to them as. Part of these rationalizations was a phenomenon called “outsourcing” where corporations sought to cut costs by outsourcing jobs to countries with a low standard of living and low wages to accompany that. So it was cheaper to do business by having it done by low cost labour so economies like Mexico, China, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh and even Canada with its highly educated workforce and cheap dollar. The fist real casualty was the clothing business virtually destroying that industry in the developed countries.

The outsourcing worked well for big capital for some time as the analysts and stockholders were delighted at soaring profits. The only problem was that it was killing jobs, destroying local economies creating unemployment, anxiety, stress, depression, spousal abuse and substance abuse. This all was done with the blessing of most national governments of Europe and North America. One patient of mine told me a story with a twist of irony if not political stupidity. She was a senior manager of an American company that had originally relocated hundreds of jobs to Canada, the land of highly educated employees and more important a 75-cent dollar. She found it rather disgusting the governor of the state where her corporation’s head office was basically kissing ass of the CEO of her corporation while effusively praising the CEO for being such a key employer in the state. This was despite the fact her corporation was amid a three-year plan to transfer 12,000 jobs from the state to China, Poland and India.

So symbolically the chickens came home to roost when the COVID’s initially hit so many countries which had outsourced thousands of jobs. Where was the personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical devices such as ventilators made? China and China had been hoarding these materials facing a mounting pandemic. As a result in the outsourcing country universe there was a severe shortage of PPE and medical devices so corporate greed led to death in hospital parking lots and hallways.

And the main source for pharmaceutical ingredients thanks to outsourcing by Big Pharma was in India and China and these countries weren’t letting go of these precious chemicals while huge caseloads developed in those countries. So more deaths in the “affluent” countries due to corporate greed and lack of a long term mentality by the politicos who could have stopped or limited outsourcing of which they were quick to prevent for the manufacture of military equipment but gave no thought to protecting the medical supply chain.

As COVID receded there was a move to repatriate the manufacture of PPE, medical devices and pharmaceutical ingredients.

The beneficiary countries of the outsourcing were usually impoverished or developing countries with poor or virtually non-existent medical systems. These countries did not have any governmental resources to fund workers forced to socially isolate or quarantine so they had minimal lockdowns preferring to let COVID take its toll as opposed to starving their populations. The result was sky high mortality and sickness and the outsourced offices and factories had skeleton staff disrupting the provision of services and goods to developed countries. What is the good of cheap labour when most of the labour force was ill? The analysts were not so happy anymore as corporate profits started to plummet. So strangely enough the Trump promise of bringing jobs back to America was partially fulfilled but as he was assassinated after losing the presidential election he never got to see the partial fulfillment of his initial campaign.

The losers were the former beneficiaries of outsourcing. Political unrest roared into action after the second wave of COVID in 2021 and assassinations and military coups flourished let alone radical Islam which dangerously flourished in Turkey as its economy was left in tatters and maintaining political control was a matter of whipping up national fervor with the roots of the New Crusades Movement with a primary goal of capturing Greek islands in the Eastern Aegean, taking over Cyprus in its entirety and implementing a “Final Solution” for the Armenians.

In China the target was the Uighur Muslims 2 million of which were in “re-education camps” prior to COVID-19. In India it was the Untouchables and poor migrant workers who were beset upon by angry mobs blaming them for spreading COVID. Each country seemed to have a whipping post minority to strike out at.