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Wednesday, December 08, 2021

Profit from Terror

Back in April of 2020, The Poynter Institute's Politifact fact-checked the claim that Dr. Fauci stood to lose millions of dollars on the COVID-19 vaccine because he invested in it. "Not true," they concluded. Or, to be more accurate, "There is no evidence that Dr. Fauci is personally financially invested ..." Whew! So it's not a case of "follow the money" then, right?

In March of 2021 The Guardian asked in an article, "Who's making billions from COVID-19 vaccines?" They had a list of companies expecting billions of dollars in sales. In April, 2021, Forbes had a story about 40 new billionaires who got rich fighting COVID-19 (vaccines, tests, antibody treatments, equipment, software, etc.). The richest of these was the president of a Chinese medical products manufacturer who ramped up production of masks and medical overalls for frontline workers across the globe. (My son, who worked for Walgreens, told me, when they finally received masks after the shortage at the outset, that all new masks were coming from Wuhan.) In May, 2021, CNN reported that the COVID-19 vaccine had "created at least nine new billionaires after shares in companies producing the shots soared."

Huh. There's a lot of money in this. But I'm sure there was nothing like that in her mind when the co-creator of AstraZeneca's COVID vaccine warned, "The next one could be worse." No, that's not terrorism for the sake of profit. I'm sure of it. Well ... sort of. Like a spin off from the old, "Always leave them laughing," it feels like we're aiming for "Always leave them scared." But that's ultimately up to you, isn't it?

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