When Globalism failed

One of Britain’s few ventilator manufacturers was still prioritising supplies to China only a month ago, even as the Covid-19 outbreak accelerated here. Breas Medical, which makes breathing equipment from sites in the UK, Sweden and the US and is owned by the Chinese conglomerate Fosun, was focused on demand for ventilators in China until early March, when it was first contacted about boosting supplies to the NHS.

And again, from the FT

According to Tagesspiegel the Berlin police had ordered the masks from 3M. They were produced in a 3M factory in China and were due to be reloaded at Bangkok airport and flown to Germany. Instead the delivery went straight to the US.

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump invoked his authority under a Korean war-era law, the Defense Production Act, with regard to 3M’s N95 respirator masks. That allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) to use “any and all authority” to buy “the number of N95 respirators” it “determines to be appropriate” from 3M and its subsidiaries, according to the wording of the act.

We haven’t even got to drugs and chemicals yet, but you can bet that most of the kit so expertly assembled by the army to construct those Nightingale Hospitals was made in China. As, absurdly, are the trousers, smocks and stable belts worn by the soldiers, the MoD having outsourced uniform and clothing production to China.

Time after time in comments both here and in the media, in riposte to my attacks on the failures of Globalism, failures that have condemned huge cohorts of our population to hardship, have halted social mobility and have made our children poorer than their parents, supporters of Globalism have pointed out the compensation. That in return for destroyed lives, hollowed communities and social decline, we have enjoyed cheap stuff. Chinese tat. Uniforms and boots so shoddy that many soldiers buy their own kit. Electric drills for £10 and jeans for a fiver.

Of course, every leader and government across the globe knows the deal with the Wuhan virus. Knows that the Chinese government and propaganda machine have lied and lied, have repressed, threatened and removed doctors and scientists trying to be internationally responsible, have lied to the world, have corrupted the WHO and it’s pathetic puppet head, Dr Tedros. They all know the 3,000 deaths the PRC reported are really 300,000 or even 3,000,000 – the satellites picked up the huge burning pits around Wuhan incinerating enough organic material to darken the skies. Yet whilst so much of our essential goods and supplies comes from this hellhole, we are obliged to be politely friendly to the PRC. No government has openly criticised the evil regime – for now, we need those masks and ventilators.

My anger is for the 1%, the greedy, fat bastards who have not only impoverished and limited their own peoples and nation to make themselves rich, but have hobbled our ability to deal with the consequences of their avarice. If this bloody virus doesn’t lead us to make a bonfire of their odious Globalism, we are utterly lost.