Drug companies loved COVID
Two years ago, Matt Colvin was the most hated man in America. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, he had almost 18,000 bottles of hand sanitizer and was charging up to $70 per bottle, delivered.
In March 2020, an article in the New York Times made Colvin infamous. The social media backlash was unbelievable and traditional media was also quite cruel.
He and his family had to go into hiding and they were nearly ruined financially.
Clearly, a global pandemic is a time to come together as human beings and support one another for the good of all. It is not a time for financial profiteering.
Or is it?
Drug companies, whose work is made possible by knowledge generated by academic researchers, additionally were given generous government grants to develop vaccines for COVID-19.
In turn, they were able to sell these vaccines back to governments at an astronomical profit.
Not only that, they refused to allow these vaccines to be given to people whose governments could not afford their asking prices. Failing to vaccinate our neighbours in less wealthy countries has likely promoted the mutation of the virus into new, more infectious strains, requiring wealthy governments to buy more and more vaccines to give boosters to their citizens.
It is very curious that Colvin was ostracized for his opportunism, yet wealthy governments continued to pour money into the coffers of drug companies and refused to pressure them to make their vaccines available in poorer countries, despite repeated pleas from the World Health Organization. Many private citizens also hopped on the gravy train, seeing their own portfolios balloon as stocks in these companies reached record levels due to COVID-19.
The pandemic has made it clear that we need to enact laws that require industry to do what is best for the public good.
Vaccines cannot be offered only to the highest bidder, and if public funds are used to develop pharmaceuticals, public health, not profitability, needs to take precedence.
Colvin made a mistake and suffered a much more severe consequence than he deserved.
Why is there no consequence nor any public outcry toward those who made millions and even billions of dollars from the COVID-19 pandemic? This is the harsh question we need to ask ourselves.