We should all commend the scientists responsible for the speedy rollout of various Covid vaccines. True, we understate the risks of mass inoculation with an inadequately tested product. But we could easily make a case that the global emergency warrants such risk taking. Yet, as illustrated by its latest conflict with President Biden, the pharmaceutical industry does not consider public health its main priority. I’ll go further: Big Pharma lacks any decency. I’ll admit that I appear to have underestimated …
The Logistics, Ethics, and Political Economy of a Covid-19 Vaccine
November 29, 2020Recent news about Pfizer’s and Moderna’s progress synthesizing a Covid-19 vaccine has been met by an understandably ebullient global reaction. According to the CDC, the first batch will be available to Americans before the end of 2020. Analysts believe that positive news about the vaccine – and really, how could the news be better? – explains much of the most recent surge in stock prices. More substantively, if the optimism were well founded it would not be unreasonable to expect …
Debt, More Debt, and Yes, Even More Debt
November 22, 2020In August of this year, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Hamid Rashid warned that a global debt crisis was looming. And just last week, Zambia became the sixth country this year – after Argentina, Belize, Ecuador, Lebanon, and Suriname – to default on its sovereign debt when President Edgar Lungu’s government failed to make a $42.5 million interest payment that was due. Under normal circumstances one sovereign default is newsworthy; the latest announcement merely underscores what a strange year it has …
Free Market Capitalism is a Pernicious Oxymoron
November 15, 2020Reading Neil Irwin’s article this morning in the New York Times really raised my hackles. It is one of those faux-centrist pieces that tries both to applaud and to censure capitalism for its response to the global pandemic. One statement in particular gets my goat. Here he is discussing the “advance purchase agreement” between Pfizer and the Federal government over Covid-19 vaccine research: But it [the above agreement] speaks to a deeper reality the pandemic has revealed — both what is amazing about …
In Defense of Idleness
September 11, 2020Modern society’s belief in the virtue of industry, productivity, or plain hard work is well ingrained in our psyche, and far predates capitalism. According to an old Arabian proverb, “the devil tempts all men, but idle men tempt the devil.” Ouch! If in any way representative of our opinion of human inactivity, it should hardly surprise that no sooner than Covid-19 forced idleness upon us all, we heard a chorus of voices keen to return to the status quo. But from …
On Getting “Back to Normal”
August 13, 2020It is quite understandable that after five months of one unprecedented event after another people in the United States are experiencing Covid fatigue and yearning for a return to normal. But what exactly is “normal?” And should we be wishing for a return to it? The question reminds me of a comedian I saw almost exactly four years ago who was discussing the 2016 contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. “Clinton or Trump,” he mused, “it’s a little like …