American gun store
Credita: Shutterstock
Across the nation, media outlets are reporting a surge of gun and ammunition sales. It does appear that a decent number of our fellow Americans are determined to bring on the apocalypse one way or another.
Some purchases, says the Associated Press, are gun owners “stocking up on ammunition after seeing grocery stores depleted.” In Northern California, reports the San Francisco Chronicle, a Pacifica gun store sported a line of more than two dozen people despite the county being under an emergency “shelter in place” order closing nonessential businesses. (The presumptive owner demanded the reporters leave.) A Charlotte, North Carolina AR-15 purchaser told The New York Times that he was worried we “just won’t have any sense of lawfulness anymore.”
There seem to be some common themes among the guns-and-ammo stockpilers. They are, unsurprisingly, the same themes that crop up before, during, and after every convulsive event—including many, many imaginary ones.
1) There are people who […]
illustration: Soohee Cho/The Intercept/Getty
As the New Coronavirus spreads illness, death, and catastrophe around the world, virtually no economic sector has been spared from harm. Yet amid the mayhem from the global pandemic, one industry is not only surviving, it is profiting handsomely.
“Pharmaceutical companies view Covid-19 as a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity,” said Gerald Posner, author of “Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America.” The world needs pharmaceutical products, of course. For the new coronavirus outbreak, in particular, we need treatments and vaccines and, in the U.S., tests. Dozens of companies are now vying to make them.
“They’re all in that race,” said Posner, who described the potential payoffs for winning the race as huge. The global crisis “will potentially be a blockbuster for the industry in terms of sales and profits,” he said, adding that “the worse the pandemic gets, the higher their eventual profit.”
The ability to make money off of pharmaceuticals is already uniquely large in the U.S., which lacks the basic price controls other countries have, giving drug […]
Banks Pressure Health Care Firms to Raise Prices on Critical Drugs, Medical Supplies for Coronavirus
Illustration: Soohee Cho/The Intercept/Getty
In recent weeks, investment bankers have pressed health care companies on the front lines of fighting the novel coronavirus, including drug firms developing experimental treatments and medical supply firms, to consider ways that they can profit from the crisis.
The media has mostly focused on individuals who have taken advantage of the market for now-scarce medical and hygiene supplies to hoard masks and hand sanitizer and resell them at higher prices. But the largest voices in the health care industry stand to gain from billions of dollars in emergency spending on the pandemic, as do the bankers and investors who invest in health care companies.
Over the past few weeks, investment bankers have been candid on investor calls and during health care conferences about the opportunity to raise drug prices. In some cases, bankers received sharp rebukes from health care executives; in others, executives joked about using the attention on Covid-19 to dodge public pressure on the opioid crisis.
Gilead Sciences, the company producing remdesivir, the most promising drug to […]
Visitors to the Department of Labor are turned away at the door by personnel due to closures over coronavirus concerns on March 18, 2020, in New York.
Credit: John Minchillo/AP
The US Department of Labor sent guidance to state labor agencies on Wednesday, asking them to hold off on releasing unemployment claims data earlier than the regularly scheduled national report on initial claims, according to a state labor agency.
The department asked state officials in an email Wednesday to only “provide information using generalities to describe claims levels (very high, large increase)” and keep the exact figures under embargo until next Thursday, according to The New York Times, which obtained the email.
“States should not provide numeric values to the public,” Gay Gilbert, the administrator of the department’s Office of Employment Insurance, wrote in the email, the Times reported.
Government figures already show that Americans are starting to lose their jobs in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Before the pandemic hit the US, initial unemployment insurance claims […]
President Trump at the coronavirus briefing at the White House on Friday.
Credit: Erin Schaff/The New York Times
In a time of global emergency, we need calm, directness and, above all, hard facts. Only the opposite is on offer from the Trump White House. It is therefore time to call the president’s news conferences for what they are: propaganda.
We may as well be watching newsreels approved by the Soviet Politburo. We’re witnessing the falsification of history in real time. When Donald Trump, under the guise of social distancing, told the White House press corps on Thursday that he ought to get rid of 75 to 80 percent of them — reserving the privilege only for those he liked — it may have been chilling, but it wasn’t surprising. He wants to thin out their ranks until there’s only Pravda in the room.
Sometimes, I stare at Deborah Birx during these briefings and I wonder if she understands that this is the footage […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
