Corruption and the Coronavirus

There is garden-variety corruption, at which the Trump administration excels, and then there is serious corruption, at which capitalists combine with government to excel.

The U.S. government, using taxpayer money, is paying two companies, plus the National Institutes for Health, to develop and test a vaccine for the coronavirus.

The government won’t release the terms of the agreement with the two corporations involved, but you can rest assured that profit is baked into the cost estimates. There will be production and distribution costs, but after the initial batch, those will be minimal.

Yesterday the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, told Congress that not everyone will be able to afford the vaccine, because drug companies need to make a profit.

We’re paying them to develop a vaccine, yet not everyone will be able to afford it.

Aside from being plainly unethical, it also violates good epidemiology. Herd immunity, which is the resistance to the spread of a contagious disease because a high proportion of people are immune due to vaccination, is needed to protect people, and up to 94 percent of a population must be vaccinated to achieve it. The flu spreads every year partially because enough people don’t get flu shots; it’s also why the measles are still a problem. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is saying we aren’t going to achieve herd immunity for the coronavirus because corporations want to make a certain level of profit per dose, regardless of the effects on people.

As I wrote this, I suddenly realized the behavior of our government and the corporations involved is beyond corruption: it is pure evil.