How is Coronavirus affecting your business?

[AgainstAllOdds]

PSA:











F*ck business.

I don't think the coronavirus is real, but for the Chinese it's very much real.

I know all of us want our product. We want business to go back to normal. We want to make money. Fulfill obligations. Keep the wheels turning.

... but right now, that's not important.

For the Chinese, the last three weeks have been extremely shitty.

These people work all year. All F*cking year so that we can get our products. And then their reward is a 2 week holiday end of the year when they get to relax, not worry about anything. Get refreshed. And come back.

This year: That didn't happen!

Not all of these factories are starting back up.

A lot of people aren't allowed outside of their homes. If they are, and they're back at work, their morale is low. They're wearing facemasks.

Each day the media is telling them that they're going to die. That their loved ones will die. Etc. For them, this is very real and very scary.

Please keep that in mind when doing business.

Think of the other person first. Ask them how they're doing. At a minimum offer some empathy.

For me, my business partners are my friends. I love talking to them on a Sunday night to kick off the week.

Right now, they're feeling down. It's our job as Americans/Europeans to lift them back up into good spirits before talking business.

 

[aminmo]

The coronavirus wiped out my dropshipping stores (my main source of income).

Thankfully, another fastlaner and I started up some new stores together (near the end of Jan) that ship out of the US. Been generating anywhere from $500 - $2k/day in sales ever since launch (with a consistent ROAS of over 4, anything over 1.5 is profit for us). We haven't even started scaling yet.

This coronavirus was basically a blessing in disguise. It got me off my a$$ and made me build legit businesses with this fastlane business parnter instead of relying on the horrible AliExpress dropshipping model.

 

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[million$$$smile]

I do not believe for one second we know the full picture of how bad this really is.

Not to sound alarming, but I highly doubt most Chinese factories will be back on line at the end of this week.

I don't think they have this anywhere under control.

And I just can't imagine being there in Wuhan.

I really feel for these people.

 

[Walter Hay]

An old friend of mine in China who operates a manufacturing business with a huge staff tells me that absenteeism is growing rapidly. He thinks his workers are not notifying him because a)they are in quarantine or b) afraid of being put in quarantine if their communications are monitored.

He is continuing to operate his factories and is considering transferring staff to the biggest in order to get maximum efficiency, but he adds that transport is badly affected, so almost all orders will be late.

At present there is a backlog of nearly a month.

Walter

 

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[GIlman]

Remember Swine flu ?
Me neither...

I think its just the media blowing things out of proportion again.

flu is a very real killer, look at Spanish flu from the early 1900’s. Millions died. You can tell this is much worse then is being reported because they built two HUGE hospitals working 24 hours a day in the month since this came out. I pay attention to actions, not the news, the fact that they emergently constructed 2600 new bed hospital there should alarm you. The Chinese government knows something they are not saying.

 

[Vigilante]

Factories are starting to send longer lead time delay messages - what originally was rosy forecasts of resumption of production after Chinese New Year will now stretch into March. Traditionally, factories need to lure workers back with perks (great food) and competitive salaries. Now, in the high production cities, workers are not free to travel, not free to job shop, and in some cases not even free to leave their apartment homes. This is going to get much worse (for people AND products) before it gets much better.

 

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[Vigilante]

Travel is restricted from the United States. Trade associations are stating that they are still holding trade shows but my guess is nobody will attend. I have heard from multiple factories that the Chinese new year production resumption is being delayed. Right now they are communicating it on a week to be week basis but I don’t think anybody knows for sure that the end is in sight.

FedEx and UPS are still delivering packages from mainland China to the United States.

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

Update:

A lot of factories are getting back to work by the end of this week. Some are not. The Chinese are coming in to work in facemasks.

In a lot of areas, factories have to have "protection facilities" for the virus, and then can submit an application to get reinstated.

This process seems to be fairly quick, since most factories will be up and running end of this week.

One giant factory that I work with (which has government connections) started working last week.

From the conversations I had, most should be working end of this week. However, expect your orders to be delayed. Everything is backlogged - factory production as well as trucking/ports/etc. Logistics will be a nightmare. Whichever orders you have, I'd add 2 weeks to your usual production time as a safe buffer. Good luck.

 

[.B.]

You can tell this is much worse then is being reported because they built two HUGE hospitals working 24 hours a day in the month since this came out. I pay attention to actions, not the news, the fact that they emergently constructed 2600 new bed hospital there should alarm you. The Chinese government knows something they are not saying.

I also observe behaviour/actions rather than trust what people or governments say...
and I also think the actual situation is way worse than what is communicated.
Here are the observed facts and what we can deduce from them:

1) On 24/01 the Chinese government cancelled all New Year festivities and prohibited any public event.
Official number of deaths at that time: less than 30.

2) A couple of days later they decide to "build in 6 days a new hospital with 1.000 beds "
They already have many hospitals in Wuhan, but the purpose was that people infected with Coronavirus would go straight to the new hospital (a clever tactic to avoid spreading the virus to other patients in the existing hospitals)

More or less at that moment, Wuhan (a city of 10 million people) is put on lockdown.
Nobody could go in or out.

Official number of deaths at that time: less than 30.

3) A couple of days after the first decision to build a new hospital, they decide to build a second hospital with 1.500 beds!

=> Now we all know that Chinese people are very good at calculation, they worked hard at it.
So it is unlikely that they miscalculated the number of beds needed based on the initial data they had on the virus.
It is more likely that between those 2 decision dates, that is, in less than 3 days, their input data had changed a lot (e.g. the number of infected people, the speed with which the virus spreads, rate of death,...)

(Just by looking at the official numbers of deaths between 25/01 and 30/01 you could see that the number of deaths followed an exponential function, and you could already do a quick mental calculation and assume that if it continued with the same trend, they would go from 90 deaths to 1.000 deaths in the following 7 to 10 days, i.e. by 09/02, ...and they could reach several thousand deaths, maybe more than 10.000 before the end of February if no cure is found...)

4) 10 days after the beginning of the construction, the first hospital was finished! Pretty impressive.

Now what I find really scary:

When the 1st hospital was finished, the number of deaths had continued to follow its exponential trend (500 deaths on the 4th of February)
So they could have decided to build a 3rd hospital with the available workforce that had just finished the first hospital....
They could even have decided to build another 2 or 3 hospitals (come on it's China, they do have the resources and capacity to coordinate mass of workers and engineers...fast)

But instead, they decided to limit themselves to those 2 new hospitals.
And now they send people suspected to have coronavirus to the other existing hospitals in Wuhan (in contradiction to their first tactical decision...)
Although they know that it will accelerate the spread of the virus to other patients in those hospitals.

It seems they decided, that the contamination is so large and it spreads so fast that building thousands of beds won't change much...

So instead they decide to make the lockdown in Wuhan in tighter cells:
They went from a city-wide lockdown
To forbidding movement between neighbourhoods
And a few days later, people were asked to not leave their apartment buildings except to go buy food...

We can assume that the idea of having lockdowns on smaller cells is: if one cell is contaminated, we may lose a certain portion of its inhabitants, but the virus spread should be limited to that cell.

So the official communication may have been: "companies will not re-open before 17/02"...

But if we analyse the actions of their government:
Only 10 days after that they had reached 25 deaths, they calculated that it made more sense to focus on preventing the further spread of the disease than to build a few more hospitals that would only provide a few thousand beds more...
Even though they have the resources to build 2 hospitals with a total of 2.500 beds in less than 2 weeks!

They downplay the severity of the illness, saying there are good chances of survival. Yet they let their economy take a blow by keeping companies closed for a long period...

Additionally, I can guess that the Chinese government has many incentives to have reassuring communication with their citizen and with the rest of the world. (commercial reasons for one, maybe also for political reasons)

Indeed, I also prefer to observe the actions rather than the communication

And so yes, the situation is really sad for the people who have to live through that crisis and who are losing close relatives in dramatic circumstances...

And now it seems that they bleach the streets in Wuhan...:

China is sending trucks to spray bleach on entire cities as the country struggles to contain the Wuhan coronavirus

Public health and infection control experts say spraying entire towns is "a little over the top," because coronaviruses don't live long on surfaces.

www.businessinsider.com

When is the last time you heard a normal virus require such drastic measures?
If that virus is not an engineered bioweapon that went lose, it is a f... super bug for sure.

Now regarding the expected time before it all goes away in China:
In this cartoon for children (in Chinese and French), they seem to want to prepare kids to stay home or at least use masks for several months:

爸妈如何给孩子解释新冠状病毒？（中法双语版绘本）

家长怎么给孩子解释新型冠状病毒？\x0a我们在获得了原作者同意之后，将这本少儿病毒绘本翻译成了法语版，供大家使用。\x0a教会孩子面对真实的生命，敬畏自然，感知光亮。

mp.weixin.qq.com

 

[NovaAria]

What do you know about this?
Is it true that some of them are aiming for a 1st of March return to work?

 

[23Infinity]

One supplier is closed till Feb 17th...and also unsure if Feb 17 is actually going to be the reopen date. Another supplier said a major order is delayed till March 3rd. I'm wondering if it's just better to cancel the order until this thing blows over - from what I'm reading from non-MSM media, it sounds pretty bad and the situation might be much worse than reported on the news.

 

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[AgainstAllOdds]

View attachment 1581317472545371.mp4

 

[Ernman]

Right now, they're feeling down. It's our job as Americans/Europeans to lift them back up into good spirits before talking business.

Spot on @AgainstAllOdds ! This is a time to show we are HUMANS no matter where we are from or the nature of our relationship to others.

 

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[Dianne Cohen]

Travel is restricted from the United States. Trade associations are stating that they are still holding trade shows but my guess is nobody will attend. I have heard from multiple factories that the Chinese new year production resumption is being delayed. Right now they are communicating it on a week to be week basis but I don’t think anybody knows for sure that the end is in sight.

FedEx and UPS are still delivering packages from mainland China to the United States.

There was a trade show here in Orlando, Florida last week and there was one very large booth. It was selling imports from China. Nobody...Nobody would go into the booth. Everyone was afraid.

 

[Sanj Modha]

This is a wake up call for everyone to buy AMERICAN

China is the enemy of the western manufacturing democracies.

im spending 50k on a mold with a US supplier for my glass jars and starting to look else where for the only other component I buy from China

Everyone says that until its time to pay up then they want cheap.

 

[Ing]

Answeres on inquiries in China slow down , respectively don t exist yet.
Its a bit frustrating not to know the reasons, but time will bring results.

I hope, people get well soon!

 

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[Katherine]

Yes and I felt it more because I am based in Sg. Many of my clients are affected

1) f&b - no one want to dine out

2) events - trade shows are cancelled

3) enrichment and tuitions for children - standby as schools might be asked to close and all the children will be home doing e-learning.

And more.

With the local cluster transmission, everyone are on high alert.

 

[Roli]

Friends of mine have been told by their suppliers that they expect to be back this week. However it feels like they are just saying that to keep customers happy(ish).

They must be losing billions.

 

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[AgainstAllOdds]

Above are some pictures from a Chinese group I'm in. That's the mindset that the Chinese are in right now. That's their reality.

And I just can't imagine being there in Wuhan.

It's not just in Wuhan.

Wuhan has it the worst. But the country is getting shut down everywhere.

People in a lot of cities aren't allowed to leave their homes except for groceries.

 

[100ToOne]

My uncle's main product is bubblegum for Jordan. He imports 4 to 5 40ft containers a month and the government stopped all food imports from China until further notice.

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

This is a wake up call for everyone to buy AMERICAN

China is the enemy of the western manufacturing democracies.

im spending 50k on a mold with a US supplier for my glass jars and starting to look else where for the only other component I buy from China

This situation isn't a valid argument for why you should go American instead of Chinese.

The epidemic is based on randomness. You have a similar probability of a random disruption happening in the U.S.

There's no way to prevent these disruptions in the supply chain. The only thing you can do is minimize risk by spreading out your production.

I really think they are overreacting. The CCP missed the golden zone back first week of December and decided to silence the people noticing what was going on, and they had to do a massive overreaction to contain which panicked most people.

Doesn't matter if they're overreacting.

The fact is that people on the ground are scared and for them it's very real.

In life, there's a "what should be" and a "what is". In China, this is currently "what is".

 

[Vigilante]

I have a small shipment coming in from China. Anyone want to come here and check it in for me? Interesting that Fedex, UPS, EMS (USPS) are still shipping.

No, You Won't Catch The New Coronavirus Via Packages Or Mail From China

Experts in infectious disease say viruses such as the novel coronavirus don't survive long on surfaces, and there's no evidence from similar outbreaks that anyone got infected by handling a package.

www.npr.org

 

[.B.]

I thought the same thing, another Swine Flu blowout.

That said, a relative forwarded me this article, the implications that the virus mortality may be far higher than the Chinese are letting on.

DO THE MATH: China holds “good news” press conference, accidentally admits the coronavirus mortality rate is closer to 17 per cent – NaturalNews.com

Although The Lancet published a recent study showing the coronavirus achieving a 15% death rate among those who are infected, the WHO, increasingly siding with communist China’s discredited “official” figures, claims the death rate is only 2%. The same source, the WHO, also says “82 per cent of...

www.naturalnews.com

I had skipped your article @Roger FS

Right now I just took the time to read the first paragraphs and the summary at the end of the article.
And it is already very interesting, scary and it is confirming my assumptions.

So comes the question:
Are the countries outside of China doing all they can to track down and monitor the health of all the people who came back from Wuhan in the last 2 months and who could carry the virus.
And ideally starting to track and monitor the people they came in contact with.

This is the only effective approach facing such a killer virus.
Especially when it seems that people that don't show symptoms can already contaminate others.

Think about it, once many citizens are infected, it will take another 3 to 4 weeks before those citizens reach the critical stage that requires them to go to a hospital. (2 weeks to show the symptoms, 1 to 2 weeks for the symptoms to become serious)

Which means that infected people spend another 3-4 weeks transmitting the disease around them, unaware, before they are diagnosed with that coronavirus...And the others will do the same, and the contamination will continue its exponential spread.

I know that in my country (Belgium) they don't take the appropriate proactive measures:

They only monitor the tip of the iceberg, and actually, the tip of the wrong Iceberg (they monitor the one infected person from the 15 Belgian citizens they brought back from Wuhan).
and they say in the news:
"IF you came back from China this month AND have flu symptoms, go straight to hospital St Pierre don't go to your general doctor"

And so all people that got contaminated by strangers that were close to them in the train, they will still go see their general doctor when they show the flu symptoms...And the doctor will not test them for Coronavirus based on the current procedure.

And so they overlook the monstrously bigger potential iceberg for Belgium and France: i.e.
France has historical and business ties with Wuhan:
french students go to study in Wuhan,
Businessmen go weekly to Wuhan then fly back to Paris.

Then those businessmen take the Thalys (the high-speed train) between Paris and Brussels and maybe they continue their high-speed train trip to London or Amsterdam...All business centers

Each of those hundreds or thousands of travellers that went to China risks to contaminate more travellers in Europe during that month before we start seeing the top of that huge iceberg surfacing, when too many of them end up at the hospital and die from pneumonia to be a coincidence...and during that time, the other unaware travellers will continue to spread the disease to exponentially more people...

I really hope I'm wrong.
We will see by mid-march, begin of April what the situation is like in Europe.
By then we should have a better idea of the situation.

And I really hope that I am wrong because I know that the Belgian government doesn't have the capacity nor the competence to coordinate lockdowns. Maybe the army does...

 

[Roger FS]

And I didn't know that website: Mercola.com

You are right. And I like how he puts more than 50 references of sources used to write his article:

Slavery or Freedom: What Will You Choose?

I recently interviewed Catherine Austin Fitts about her work in exposing corruption and fraud in the banking industry and government.

articles.mercola.com

I put in that disclaimer about Mercola.com because...ironically, wikipedia has a very low view of his website, as he does of theirs. Rather than just argue who's right, look to the source/reference information.

I have subscribed to Mercola's free health newsletter for about 20 yrs, the only thing I subscribed to anywhere near that long. Dr Mercola is always seeking to improve, and always willing to admit when he was wrong and/or found better information and changed his viewpoint. He was ahead of the curve of the importance of higher doses of D3, keto, etc. Even with an immune compromised family member, our family rarely gets colds, and I don't remember getting the flu in decades, largely because of following some basics (higher D3/K2 supplementation, minimal sugars/grains, etc) that Mercola has been recommending for many years.

 

[Walter Hay]

IMPORTING HAS NOT BEEN KILLED BY CORONAVIRUS

I have received quite a few messages from people who have taken the advice that I have posted here for years, and more recently in my book: "Think globally. Don't buy from China, when there are many other countries where you can buy quality equal to or better than in China, at no higher cost."
See these posts: If you import from China, this may be relevant. and...
If you import from China, this may be relevant.

The current revision of my sourcing book addresses this issue in detail, with links to export B2B sites in 41 countries including China.

Now would be the time to source from one of those almost 40 countries other than China, and free yourself from the problems that buying from China are currently causing big losses.

I must add that searching those other sites outside of China will require more thought, more work, and more persistence, but isn't your business future worth it?

The people who have recently been writing to me are gleeful about the present situation. No problems importing, and no problems selling.

Walter

 

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[Rivoli]

What do you know about this?
Is it true that some of them are aiming for a 1st of March return to work?

View attachment 30271

have not heard anything like that
Shenzen is close and it seem like some Shenzen company working already

 

[Val Okafor]

I am just hoping that this too shall pass!. Any word on a breakthrough for the vaccine?

 

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[Rivoli]

An old friend of mine in China who operates a manufacturing business with a huge staff tells me that absenteeism is growing rapidly. He thinks his workers are not notifying him because a)they are in quarantine or b) afraid of being put in quarantine if their communications are monitored.

He is continuing to operate his factories and is considering transferring staff to the biggest in order to get maximum efficiency, but he adds that transport is badly affected, so almost all orders will be late.

At present there is a backlog of nearly a month.

Walter

So my main factory is closed for one component, but suddenly has opened second factory for my other big qty components. So I found another factory, the biggest in China, In Shenzen for the component he’s closed on and they are starting on two containers tomorrow, sending to port March.

 

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[Rivoli]

My uncle's main product is bubblegum for Jordan. He imports 4 to 5 40ft containers a month and the government stopped all food imports from China until further notice.

This is a wake up call for everyone to buy AMERICAN

China is the enemy of the western manufacturing democracies.

im spending 50k on a mold with a US supplier for my glass jars and starting to look else where for the only other component I buy from China

 

[Rivoli]

This situation isn't a valid argument for why you should go American instead of Chinese.

The epidemic is based on randomness. You have a similar probability of a random disruption happening in the U.S.

There's no way to prevent these disruptions in the supply chain. The only thing you can do is minimize risk by spreading out your production.





Doesn't matter if they're overreacting.

The fact is that people on the ground are scared and for them it's very real.

In life, there's a "what should be" and a "what is". In China, this is currently "what is".

Epidemics are random but how governments handle them are not. The first case was December 1. Instead of containing, like western doctors did with the Ebola outbreak, and immediately stopping the spread, the Chinese government arrested the 8 dr’s that raised the alarm. It spread for a month and 5 million people left Wuhan.

Not only that, I’m sure you got the same email I did from everyone saying we will be back to work Feb 10. It’s not going to be until March they get back.

China is not a reliable source, ignoring all the reasons such as loyalty to your own country, and seeing how much damage they have done to the USA (just announced they were behind the Equifax hack), their government has proven with SARS and this outbreak that its incompetent.

 

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