How To Profit From A Pandemic
Make drugs, corrupt governments, sell drugs, PROFIT
Modern drug companies are not that different from Pablo Escobar, just more successful. You just need to make drugs, corrupt a government and profit. What do you think is happening with the pandemic?
Drug companies like Pfizer and Moderna have taken it to the next level. Extra-Escobar. They get governments to pay for drug development, then sell the drugs right back to them. Can you imagine that? Your investor is also your customer. You get paid twice. All you have to do is eat steak with them and contribute to their re-election campaign.
Hell, you can get paid even before distributing the product. You’re a public listed company. Just issue a press release and sell stock immediately. The Pfizer CEO sold 62% of his stock on the same day they announced a vaccine. It’s amazing. This what Pablo never lived to see. Corruption so complete, it’s called a miracle, avarice so grand it builds museums.
While people die. And make no mistake, people will die from this. People in my country and across the world will die. All of these vaccines could have been global public goods, as the WHO called for. Instead, corrupt western governments are milking a pandemic for profit. And it doesn’t even profit western people. The global pandemic will continue longer because of this greed. It’s just a grift upon us all.
What Could Have Been
Before I get into how completely rank the profiteering has been, let me just get into what should have been. Here are the WHO’s recommendations. They proposed vaccinating 20% of the world population, the most vulnerable, so we could restart the global economy as well.
The allocation of vaccines is proposed to be rolled out in two phases.In phase 1, doses will be allocated proportionally to all participating countries simultaneously to reduce overall risk.In phase 2, consideration will be given to countries’ in relation to threat and vulnerability.For most countries, a phase 1 allocation that builds up to 20 percent of the population would cover most of the at-risk groups.If we don't protect these highest risk people from the virus everywhere and at the same time, we can't stabilise health systems and rebuild the global economy.Why should we do this? Because it’s a global pandemic, that’s literally what pandemic means. Epidemics can be fought locally. Pandemics must, by definition, be fought together, strategically. Otherwise the virus will continue to bounce around.
While there is a wish amongst leaders to protect their own people first, the response to this pandemic has to be collective.This is not charity, we have learned the hard way that the fastest way to end this pandemic and to reopen economies is to start by protecting the highest risk populations everywhere, rather than the entire populations of just some countries.Sharing finite supplies strategically and globally is actually in each country's national interest.No one is safe until everyone is safe.We need to prevent vaccine nationalism.The WHO proposed doing this through COVAX, a joint buying program with hundreds of countries. Given the scale of the pandemic rich governments could have negotiated or even taken supplies from drug companies (using the Defense Production Act in the US for example), making everything much cheaper.
Vaccines could have been distributed to at-risk populations everywhere, enabling the global economy to restart. And honestly, I’m tired of the economy/people distinction. The economy is just the shared activity of people times the greed of a few (and we’ve got the balance way off). Strategic vaccine production would save lives.
Instead, vaccine nationalism from the west has ruled the day. Rich countries are actively blocking the sharing of medicines at the WTO and hoarding vaccines. And so people will die. My people. You greedy, selfish, self-defeating assholes. You’re venal, you’re stupid and you’re corrupt.
What Has Happened
Instead of a strategic, cheap vaccine deployment, we’re having an orgy of greed. Canada, for example, has bought enough vaccine for 5x its population, tossing off some cash as charity to cover their gluttony. Rich countries are buying many times more than they need. The US has issued America First executive orders to ensure that the rest of the world gets none.
And your media launders this. They parrot stories about miracles and immigrant scientists, ignoring the fact that rampant vaccine nationalism has fucked the world. Just look at when we’ll be getting vaccines, because you idiots have both spiked demand and gobbled up all the supply:
I’m in a red country. 2023! Are you fucking kidding me? We’re a poor country that tried to manage this while the west couldn’t test and trace its own ass. And now they just buy their way out of it, stepping on our necks in the process? Actually blocking us at the WTO and casting doubt on countries that try to help?
This is basically an opposite map to who managed the pandemic well, but who has to pay? The competent countries in Africa, primarily. Colonialism, climate change, COVID-19, can white people fucking stop already?
You know who’s stepped in to help us? China and Russia. Especially China because they cleared themselves and reduced demand. Do you know how the Western media covers them? Like they’re brewing up bathtub vaccine to take over the world. When they’re just doing what the WHO told everyone to do.
White people literally cannot understand anything that isn’t for profit. They can’t understand any sort of public interest or decency. The west is so corrupt that everything looks corrupt to them. But it’s just you, white people. It’s just you.
It didn’t have to be this way. Your governments had all the negotiating power in the world, and how did they use it? They bought the drug dealers supplies and then also bought the drugs, at whatever price they asked. You fools. You’ve talked about development and aid for years, but when the world needed you, what happened? You got your own dumbasses infected and now you’re hoarding needles in every vein. You assholes.
For billions of people in the world it’s frankly nauseating reading your vaccine news. You’ve taken a moment for global cooperation and made it about rank vaccine nationalism, vaccine racism in fact. The only thing we are getting inoculated against is the idea that the West was ever competent or decent. Throughout this pandemic we have seen you, and the only thing you care about is your stock market. Not your own people, and certainly not us.
Western governments and corporations are exploiting the pandemic for profit, while we die. They’re extending the pandemic to boost their stock portfolios, while we suffer. And they want our praise for this. They want to be heroes. But they’re no different than Pablo Escobar. It’s just a web of drugs and corruption to make a few people very, very rich.
Vaccines should be a global public good. They should be patent-free. Instead they’ve become a testament to the complete corruption to the West, atop a mountain of private greed.
Further reading, because I am verily pissed at this:
