Yesterday, when posting my selfie Masked Man, I had alluded to my professional life that pays the bills for my artistic endeavors. My Life Science career has been a wonderful mix of manufacturing & logistics, technical operations, and scientific discover; truly an interesting mashup of left and right brain thinking.
Background: One of the consulting projects that my company undertook some 10 years ago was to assist in the relocation of vast amounts of medical garment manufacturing from Mexico to China. Part was the need for lower wage and part was moving closer to lower cost materials being sourced from India and other Asia material manufacturers. At that time, there were huge manufacturing companies in China for the sewing and gluing of sterile medical garments; shoe covers, bonnets (hats), and gowns (jump-suits). Most of the sterile glove manufacturing (a prior project) had already been moved to Asia ten plus years before to be closer to the latex raw materials which at that time were essential for any type of surgical or exam gloves. So a semi-retired medical logistics professional who has been on the ground floor for sterile medical Manufacturing.
Which from a logistic perspective takes me to today. In the news there is reporting of huge plane loads of sterile garments needed by hospitals coming from China. This should not be surprise. The response I hear is why is China shipping these when they are having the same COVID-19 issue? But they are not! China has evolved in their fight with COVID-19 and are past the apex (infection curve) and in fact moving back to a new normal; new infections are way down, deaths per day are way down.
Nevertheless, the sterile garment manufacturers in China are still running at high gear, as much as I can tell. Since the demand for these sterile garments within China is quickly dwindling, their sterile garment inventories are still rapidly building up. China medical garment companies now have too much sterile garments in inventory, while we (America) as well as others desperately need this sterile garment inventory. Thus, China is more than willing to export (sell) it and send it our way. Very willing!
Now the logistics trick is to get these sterile garments to the right cities, and then to the hospitals and organizations that are in desperate need. Yes, we also need to be able to ship this critical inventory out of China, which should be much less of an issue since they now have control of COVID-19. Regretfully, the control of COVID-19 is not something we have here in America and with our lack of WH leadership, may not for quite a while yet. It appears that the logistic teams on the ground in America seem to know how to get this sterile garment inventory to the right places in spite of our own government.
Nevertheless, the access to the sterile garments, as well as medical equipment like respirators that are made in China should be coming to the rescue for America as well as other countries which are behind the COVID-19 infection curve. So just like the Western movies, the Calvary is on the horizon and starting to make their charge to save us. As a medical logistics expert, I had started to anticipate this a week or so ago when watching the COVID-19 infection curve in China, but I am now pretty excited, as well as hopeful, that we are about to get the needed resources to help combat this awful virus, and thus the reason I wanted to share this here. A bit of an unusual post for this venue, using my artistic site to discuss sterile medical garment manufacturing, but we are in very interesting times.
Cheers, stay healthy and safe my friends,
Doug
PS, during my extended stays in China, I developed a couple of different artistic projects related to China’s urban landscape of developing industrial manufacturing. Who knows, maybe one of these, perhaps Wo Zhi KanKan (I am Just Looking) or Liu Guan Lue Yin (Flow of Light Brush the Shadow), might yet see the light of day.
Featured artwork above: Medical Garment Manufacturing, China copyright 2008 Douglas Stockdale
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Gardening For Ordnance solo on-line exhibition, Fabrik Projects on Artsy.net, March 24th – April 30th, 2020.
Los Angeles Center of Photography (LACP) Faculty Exhibition, in Los Angeles at the new LACP gallery, located at 566 Washington Blvd. The exhibition opened March 21st and the closing reception is Saturday, April, 18, 2020, from 7-10pm. TBD
Update! Medium Photo 2020 Workshop: Developing a Creative Book workshop that I will be leading, is now rescheduled for September 24 – 27th, 2020, a four-day extended weekend workshop in San Diego.
Medium Photo 2020 Lecture Series, I will be giving a one-evening lecture Artist Books as Art Objects on Friday, March 20th, from 7:30 – 9pm at the You Belong Here artist venue, located at 3619 El Cajon Blvd, San Diego, California 92104. TBD
Singular Images 