What Happened to the Great American Logistics Machine? - The New York Times

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It started with silence, or something close to silence, or perhaps it was simply the absence of a low-level hum that nobody knew was humming until it stopped. In the quiet we realized that, until the pandemic arrived, we had lived in a vast, elaborate, whirring contraption that delivered culture and commerce at spectacular speeds, with astonishing efficiency.

Logistics — the science of making Thing A and delivering it to Point B — had become a national art form, the corporate answer to jazz, stand-up comedy and end-zone dances. America was like an operating system that upgraded itself so regularly that its design and endless enhancements were taken for granted.

Now, the heart of the great American logistics machine is beating slowly and erratically, and in some places it has gone into full-on cardiac arrest. Inevitably, one of our many reactions is pure bewilderment.

Us?

Wait. Us?

Rationing meat. Scrambling for masks. Running low on crucial drugs. The early shortages for the pandemic — swabs, toilet paper, ventilators — were a foreshadowing, not an aberration. We still don’t have enough good tests. Our national pantry, long bursting, lacks essentials. Come to think of it, it’s also missing some nonessentials. Just try to buy a bicycle.

Let us acknowledge the obvious: The country is flunking a curriculum that it basically wrote. Which is baffling. American supremacy in logistics has been a calling card for decades, even among people unfamiliar with the L-word.

Logistics enticed millions of immigrants to move here. Opportunity is an idea. Logistics is a job. Actually, it’s an entire ecosystem of jobs, one that starts in factories and ends in showrooms; or starts on drafting tables and ends at building sites; or starts at farms, rumbles through packaging plants, heads to kitchens and lands on plates.

Henry Ford in front of his Detroit factory in 1905.Credit...Mondadori, via Getty Images

When this country wasn’t enticing labor from overseas, it was hoovering up foreign ideas, then improving them. The industrial revolution started in England, but it was refined to a planet-altering effect by Henry Ford and his car factories. The smartphone was popularized by BlackBerry of Canada. Apple of Silicon Valley crushed the company with the iPhone, which it confects from parts made in China, Germany, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the list goes on. The coordination of all these far-flung manufacturers — one imagines an air traffic control room, buzzing day and night — and their harmony in a finished product are a marvel of logistics.

Walmart moves 200 million customers a year through 11,000 stores, a feat it performs through innovations to a supply chain that by the late 1980s included the largest private satellite network in the world. Amazon fine-tuned delivery from its warehouses to your doorstep from one week to two days, to one day, to two hours in certain markets. And the trucks and vans transporting all those boxes navigate to their destinations with rarely a wrong turn. That’s because another American company, Google, mapped the world, street by street, an epochal moment in the history of logistics and an end to the centuries-old, uniquely human affliction known as being lost.

One company, UPS, so mastered logistics that nine years ago it turned the word into the centerpiece of an ad campaign. In a “We Love Logistics” television spot, a woman sang these lyrics to the tune of “That’s Amore,” a love song that invokes both pizza and the moon: “When it’s planes in the sky for a chain of supply, that’s logistics / When the parts for the line come precisely on time, that’s logistics.”

A UPS worker in SoHo in March, not long before New York entered lockdown.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

This ditty may have tormented fans of the Dean Martin version, but the overall idea was within the bounds of self-promotion. Today, that ad would sound like satire. Supply chains have fallen apart. Production, we hear time and again, has not “ramped up.” Especially for items needed most, like N-95 masks and Lysol wipes.

It’s a lot easier to buy a pizza.

There’s no point in tagging this as a problem endemic to the U.S. government. It can handle logistics, and for proof look no further than the Postal Service. Ignore the current domestic attacks on the system. Elsewhere, it is the envy of the world, delivering far more letters per employee (269,000) than any other in the Group of 20, according to a 2012 study by England’s Oxford Strategic Consulting.

Many parts of the private sector, meantime, remain hobbled.

It was reassuring to watch leaders of Walmart, CVS, Target and others gather in the Rose Garden with President Trump in mid-March to announce that the companies would chip in to rapidly expand Covid-19 testing, working in tandem with the administration. Today, Target has exactly one testing site, in the parking lot of its store in Chula Vista, Calif. After a stumbling start, Walmart announced that it had beaten its goal of opening 100 sites by May 31. CVS had opened 50 sites as of mid-May, and promised to have 1,000 open by the end of the month.

The Coronavirus Outbreak

• Frequently Asked Questions and Advice

  Updated May 20, 2020

  • How many people have lost their jobs due to coronavirus in the U.S.?

    Over 38 million people have filed for unemployment since March. One in five who were working in February reported losing a job or being furloughed in March or the beginning of April, data from a Federal Reserve survey released on May 14 showed, and that pain was highly concentrated among low earners. Fully 39 percent of former workers living in a household earning $40,000 or less lost work, compared with 13 percent in those making more than $100,000, a Fed official said.

  • What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

    Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

  • How can I protect myself while flying?

    If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

  • Is ‘Covid toe’ a symptom of the disease?

    There is an uptick in people reporting symptoms of chilblains, which are painful red or purple lesions that typically appear in the winter on fingers or toes. The lesions are emerging as yet another symptom of infection with the new coronavirus. Chilblains are caused by inflammation in small blood vessels in reaction to cold or damp conditions, but they are usually common in the coldest winter months. Federal health officials do not include toe lesions in the list of coronavirus symptoms, but some dermatologists are pushing for a change, saying so-called Covid toe should be sufficient grounds for testing.

  • Can I go to the park?

    Yes, but make sure you keep six feet of distance between you and people who don’t live in your home. Even if you just hang out in a park, rather than go for a jog or a walk, getting some fresh air, and hopefully sunshine, is a good idea.

  • How do I take my temperature?

    Taking one’s temperature to look for signs of fever is not as easy as it sounds, as “normal” temperature numbers can vary, but generally, keep an eye out for a temperature of 100.5 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. If you don’t have a thermometer (they can be pricey these days), there are other ways to figure out if you have a fever, or are at risk of Covid-19 complications.

  • Should I wear a mask?

    The C.D.C. has recommended that all Americans wear cloth masks if they go out in public. This is a shift in federal guidance reflecting new concerns that the coronavirus is being spread by infected people who have no symptoms. Until now, the C.D.C., like the W.H.O., has advised that ordinary people don’t need to wear masks unless they are sick and coughing. Part of the reason was to preserve medical-grade masks for health care workers who desperately need them at a time when they are in continuously short supply. Masks don’t replace hand washing and social distancing.

  • What should I do if I feel sick?

    If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

  • How do I get tested?

    If you’re sick and you think you’ve been exposed to the new coronavirus, the C.D.C. recommends that you call your healthcare provider and explain your symptoms and fears. They will decide if you need to be tested. Keep in mind that there’s a chance — because of a lack of testing kits or because you’re asymptomatic, for instance — you won’t be able to get tested.

  • How can I help?

    Charity Navigator, which evaluates charities using a numbers-based system, has a running list of nonprofits working in communities affected by the outbreak. You can give blood through the American Red Cross, and World Central Kitchen has stepped in to distribute meals in major cities.

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Every bit helps, but 1,101 sites won’t get us to the goal of five million tests a day that Mr. Trump referred to in late April.

Drive-through coronavirus testing outside a Walmart in Northlake, Ill.Credit...Pat Nabong/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated Press

You’d never know it from the halting pace of this rollout, but the United States is a pioneer in public-private partnerships. Spectacularly ambitious ones, in fact. Like the moon landing. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration hired 20,000 companies across all 50 states to produce and assemble the roughly six million parts needed for each of the Apollo missions. They included Playtex, best known as the maker of the Cross Your Heart bra, which was hired to build the spacesuits worn by the astronauts. (We know about comfortable, flexible garments, Playtex said in its pitch.)

“In some ways, NASA had to invent large-project management for the modern era,” Charles Fishman wrote in “One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon,” “while supervising the invention and perfection of the technology to do something that had never been done before.”

Back in the present, and back on earth, the coronavirus is offering a real-time demonstration of how to hopscotch the globe, with ease and speed. Exactly how it gets around is, to some degree, a mystery we are still solving. (Cats can give it to cats, a study published this month concluded.) But starting from an unknown patient zero, it has infected nearly five million people around the world in a matter of months, enlisting victims in its supply chain and deploying them as vehicles to get around.

It is beating us at the logistics game and won’t wait for us to get our mojo back.

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What Happened to the Great American Logistics Machine? - The New York Times
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