The Covid-19 Vaccine Conspiracy Nobody's Talking About
I love a good conspiracy theory. I enjoy the dopamine rush of diving headfirst into a rabbit hole risking my sanity in the process. During the quarantine, I did just that. Swimming in the internet currents of RFID chips, Bill Gates, nanotechnology, bioweapons, population control, and 5G. Anything to satisfy my dopamine cravings. I watched The ‘Plandemic’ and ‘Tracking Down the Origin of Wuhan Coronavirus’ back to back in one sitting. Like most conspiracy theories, the evidence was circumstantial at best and raised more questions than it answered. Having said that, I didn’t find any of the Rona theories all that compelling. At least Qanon has underground mole children and CIA gunfights in Germany to capture a Dominion server. Now that’s an entertaining conspiracy. The idea of Bill Gates investing hundreds of millions to develop a vaccine to track my normie ass commuting to work 5 days a week is kind of lame. Besides, my phone does that quite effectively. After coming out the other end of the rabbit hole disappointed and dopamine deprived maybe all of these vaccine and covid conspiracies are just a distraction. Obfuscating our broken for-profit health care system and the millionaires and billionaires who buy their second and third private islands off of our misery.
Bill Gates is a Capitalist First
In the spring of 2020 Oxford University developed a covid-19 vaccine and promised to donate the rights to any drug-maker. Essentially making it open source. The idea was to provide medicines preventing or treating COVID-19 at a low cost or free of charge, the British university said. That humanitarian spirit only lasted a few weeks before Oxford caved and reversed course signing an exclusive deal with AstraZeneca which made no guarantee to sell the vaccine at a low price. Here’s where the internet’s favorite boogie man steps in. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation persuaded the university, I’m being generous here, to sign the patent rights over to AstraZeneca by flexing the foundation’s political and financial power. The Gates Foundation is the key funder of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations or CEPI, which funds Oxford’s vaccine projects to the tune of $384 million. The foundation also directly gives the British university hundreds of millions of dollars through charitable grants for various projects. Why would the face of rich guy philanthropy want to stop billions of people from having affordable access to a life-saving vaccine? Here’s a clue. According to K M Gopakumar, legal adviser to the Third World Network, who is based in India, “If we change the way in which you regulate the industry, or the ways in which you want medicines or vaccines to be produced and delivered,” “it’s definitely going to affect these companies’ business model — and also the investments of Gates Foundation. So they are using their money to reinforce the status quo.” This all adds up when you take into account the Gates Foundation’s holdings of Big Pharma companies like Pfizer, BioNTech, CureVac, and Vir Biotechnology. All who have or are in the process of developing a COVID-19 vaccine. Why isn’t this trending? Well, the media doesn’t want the Big Pharma advertising dollars to dry up. So instead of showcasing real epidemiologists to inform the public, they parade around a billionaire computer nerd. The facts may not care about your feelings, but the capitalists don’t care about your health or well-being.
Everything's a Commodity
Google the words vaccine stocks and you get pages of advice on which Big Pharma stocks you can bet on. Titles like ‘3 Covid Vaccine Stocks That Could Be Millionaire-Makers’ or ‘7 Biotech Stocks To Buy For Profit From The Vaccine Crunch’. With a global death toll of over 2 million as of early 2021 and untold economic and social devastation, speculating on vaccine stocks seems more sadistic than Darwinian. But this is neoliberalism after all so it possibly a mixture of the two. On the other side of the bitcoin, you have pharmaceutical execs cashing in on their companies vaccine progress. A January 21, 2021 report released by Accountable Pharma details over $250 million in insider trading by executives and directors at five major drug companies producing vaccines after receiving billions in taxpayer funding. According to SEC filings, from the launch of Operation Warp Speed on May 15 through August 31, 2020, executives and directors at five of the companies receiving COVID vaccine funding through the Trump Administration initiative made stock transactions valued at a net profit of more than $145 million. Moderna was the most active netting $115 million in profit. “This is an eye-popping amount of money that drug company executives have shamelessly cashed out after pumping up their stock prices with billions of taxpayer dollars,” said Eli Zupnick, spokesman for Accountable Pharma. “While taxpayers are putting more and more skin in the game through Operation Warp Speed, drug company executives are feverishly pulling theirs out and making sure that they come out of this big winners whether or not they actually deliver a safe and effective vaccine.” Disaster capitalism at its finest.
Medicare for the Rich
While millions of Americans are waiting in hours-long lines to get vaccinated, the elite are skipping the line. The rich and powerful are using private physicians, concierge services, connections to get inoculated first. Private jet setters are traveling across the globe to engage in vaccine tourism. Hollywood insiders are flying to Florida, a casino magnate and his wife were caught flying to Canada to cut in line in front of the indigenous locals, there’s even concierge service to get the jab internationally. If you have a minimum net worth of $800 million you join the Knightsbridge Circle, a concierge service offering luxury vaccination holidays in the UAE.
Stepping over society’s most vulnerable isn’t just for the ultra-wealthy. With vaccine shortages and delays, the upper-middle-class are getting in on the vaccine Hunger Games too. According to a New York Times Report, wealthy people across the country are flocking to low-income neighborhoods to get vaccinated. George Jones, head of Bread for Jones, a New York City nonprofit medical clinic, told a local news outlet, “Suddenly our clinic was full of white people. We’d never had that before. We serve people who are disproportionately African-American.”. Early reports of the nationwide vaccine rollout show that White Americans are receiving most of the vaccines. According to Politico, just 5% of Black Americans and 11% of Latinos have received the vaccine since the beginning of February. When you add the limited access to the vaccine, the higher rates of contraction and death, and the over-representation of black and Latino workers in front-line industries our countries priorities are clear. Not to mention the elderly, homeless, and prison populations which nobody cares about until they become an inconvenience.
America’s Pastime
Conspiracy theories are an American pastime. Myths about its founding and founding fathers are the glue that holds this country together. I mean, burning witches at the stakes used to be a thing here, so people animatedly believing in shape-shifting reptilian beings running the government is very on-brand. While most Americans were locked down due to a global pandemic, social media and the attention economy exploded. The algorithms designed to keep its users engaged found that rabbit holes are not only engaging but very profitable for Big Tech. One side effect of AI radicalizing Nana and Pawpaw is the mainstreaming conspiracy theories. Ultimately moving the public discourse into non-constructive disagreements about perception. While the rubes yell past each other over a vaccine that may not be accessible to everybody, Bill Gates doesn’t isn't losing a wink of sleep in his quite castle on his floating bed made of money.
