Intercept:
"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."
-->Oh yes, the long arm of neoliberal economic policies is going to kill more people during the corona pandemic. Well, at least a few filthy rich people will get even richer as the bodies pile up. This story was not covered in the NYT.
=====
Common Dreams:
"As the federal government develops strategies for how to deal with the coronavirus outbreak that has already significantly damaged the U.S. economy and killed over 100 Americans, a group of lawmakers are urging Congress approve the purchasing of 19 more F-35 fighters than the Pentagon requested as part of the battle against the disease, enraging progressives. ...
Win Without War has issued a list of policy demands—laid out in a document titled 'U.S. Foreign Policy in the Face of the Coronavirus'—to help guide the government's handling of the crisis.
'The greatest security challenges of the 21st century—global inequality, climate change, pandemics—cannot be solved militarily,' the document declares. 'Years of funneling trillions of dollars into the Pentagon instead of investing in critical human needs have left us woefully unprepared to meet them.' "
-->Does our mainstream media ever link US spending on the military to the fact that public health is so grossly underfunded? Millions of Americans might die in the pandemic, but we will get 19 more F-35 fighters.
=====
Common Dreams:
"A group of economists and policy experts on Wednesday called on President Donald Trump to immediately lift the United States' crippling sanctions against Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries, warning that the economic warfare—in addition to being cruel in itself—is 'feeding the coronavirus epidemic' by hampering nations' capacity to respond.
'This policy is unconscionable and flagrantly against international law. It is imperative that the U.S. lift these immoral and illegal sanctions to enable Iran and Venezuela to confront the epidemic as effectively and rapidly as possible,' Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs said in a statement just hours after the Trump administration intensified sanctions against Iran, which has been devastated by COVID-19."
-->Does the mainstream media ever even look at the consequences of US economic sanctions against foreign countries? Blocking critical supplies just feeds the pandemic, but the NYT was not interested in this story.
