Will the current COVID-19 outbreak increase the use of block-chain in supply chain management globally?

post by jmh · 2020-02-28T14:53:15.777Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

This is a question post.

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2 comments

Would be curious if those here think the answer is yes or no and how strongly they hold that view.

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comment by mingyuan · 2020-02-28T19:06:55.407Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Can you maybe give a brief explanation of why you think this might or might not be the case?

Replies from: jmh
comment by jmh · 2020-02-28T20:03:11.549Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

A few things brought it to mind.

First, this has been considered a positive factor in some recent contamination in produce that resulted in a number of deaths. Tracing the source was difficult but, and this might be a mistaken memory, the second cases was more quickly traced to its source because the supply chain had implemented block chain technology to track the transactions within the distribution.

Second, rational or irrational (you choose), people are afraid of things like this and companies that can point to their products and inputs as having never passed though any infection zone can present themselves as a safer, superior product on the market. Additionally, this aspect is of value in the sense it can apply to any number of scenarios besides epidemic events. So doing something in response to this is not really going to be a sunk cost later.

Last, as was just noted, the potential shelf live of the virus outside a living organism may well be greater than shipping or storage prior to use. I suspect that other virus may well have longer survival characteristics and a future virus may be just as contagious as those we've seen in the past but the transmission vector not as human-human as COVID-19. Given the difficulty in containing the spread of COVID-19, how difficult would that be if spread occurred by both direct and indirect contact with an infected person?

That said, the main point of the question was to get other peoples response and thought regardless of any thoughts I might have. I suppose I'll skip that part now.