Does the pharmaceutical industry leverage a culture of corruption to increase profits?
Has Big Pharma been profiteering during the Covid-19 outbreak and doubling and tripling their profit margins when compared to the cost of vaccinating the world?
Are the pharmaceutical companies and vaccination manufacturers working in synergy to earn more?
Are governments worldwide being lacklustre and incompetent, and merely giving patents to Big Pharma than actually preserving public, social, and national interest?
The answer to the aforementioned is a stark YES.
Here’s some interesting vaccination for thought (food for thought is so pre-pandemic, no?); why is the world spending copious amounts while Big Pharma and the vaccination manufacturers earn and global mainstream media witch-hunt or so it seems? The Joe Rogan Experience has amassed nearly 10% profit from this sporadic display of global theatre where one variant ends, so some new strain can emerge and thereafter new vaccines and boosters are required?
Why not simply spend one lump figure and try to achieve herd immunity by vaccinating the entire world so that a sizeable portion is protected?
According to an article published on 9 December 2021 on www.pharmaceutical-technology.com pharmaceutical companies, and particularly vaccine manufacturers, have been earning about $ 36 billion every year in perpetuity as against the $10 billion required to vaccinate the entire world at once.
Pfizer, for instance, develops one Covid-19 shot for 76 p, but is reportedly selling the vaccine shots for $ 29 a dose to the UK Government.
It’s also no secret that Pfizer has been working stridently in lobbying against and blocking any legislation that lends credence to whistleblowers who report or shed light on corporate fraud.
According to findings reported by Russel Brand on his official YouTube channel it is alleged that the good folks at Pfizer paid $ 2.3 billion in 2009 in civil and criminal fines to settle allegations that the conglomerate illegally marketed a plethora of drugs for off-label purposes.
Now isn’t that just rich and righteous?
JRE
I am sure many of you must be aware of the co-ordinated response to condemn Joe Rogan and some of his guests on his Spotify podcast recently? Joe Rogan is no stranger to speaking out candidly and raising narratives and discussions on the Covid-19 pandemic, the regulations surrounding it, and the dynamic changes to how some nations are responding to the new strains is now the target of a Big Pharma and million followers on Spotify, with over 11 million streams per episode. The truth is that Rogan continues to challenge certain corporate relationships and partnerships between Big Pharma, vaccination manufacturers, media, and governments. He has been accused of spreading misinformation with regards to the pandemic, allegedly disseminating false claims and provoking distrust in science and medicine.
If we cut through the fabric of that narrative what it really means is that Joe Rogan and some of his guests are calling out the big wigs and movers and shakers of corporatism, pharmacological, political, and media-oriented propaganda to inundate the world with blind obedience.
The cradle rockers
And as the old maxim somewhat goes: The hands that rock the cradle, rule the world.
The rockers of the cradle are of course the mega-monoliths of big business, the mass media, state figureheads, and corporate giants. They do not care to be questioned, let alone challenged.
Having a world blindly follow at the heels of a formulated, fabricated narrative at every corner and turn is convenient. There are far too many alliances between all the cradle rockers – too much cash-flow, tenders, trade agreements, shady deals, and business opportunities to simply shy away from such prospects.
What is the banal purpose of a business? What lies at the epicentre of its bare essence? Why, to make money of course. To increase profits and value for shareholders and to sustain the business through an operational framework and model that will ensure profits are maximised, while maintaining corporate social responsibility. That last bit is always a play-it-safe sell, isn’t it?
Many of the big money makers don’t give a feint or flatulence of such things as corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and customer centric values.
A lot of the food and beverage manufacturers don’t really give a toss and tinfoil hat about people’s health.
Much in the same way that big corporates going green is an advertising smokescreen of theatrical public display of organisational change, clever marketing gimmicks, and some calculated visual circus to depict that the company operates with deep concern for its ecological surroundings. Take supermarkets. The aisles and new branding displays are all green, yet the bulk of their poultry, meat, fish, fruits, and vegetables are sold in plastic bags.
Then we have the media. In the words of the late, great Warrel Dane, Final Product, 2005 (This Godless Endeavor):
“The media loves the latest tragic suicide
They exploit it, then package it and profit from the people who die
Look at the world, look at the hell, look at the hate that we’ve made
Look at the final product, a world in slow decay…”
It’s nothing new to discuss how many media corporations have sold their integrity to preserve their commercial interests. Many that have succumbed to the vagaries of humanity; tragedies, sensationalism, glamour, influencer culture, cancel culture, whatever is trending and floats public boats; bastardising personal lives, breeding ineptitude and mediocrity, ready to chastise, vilipend, and crucify those who stand up for real causes and problems and issues. If it garners more clicks, site visits, generates leads and readership, it’s newsworthy.
My point is that multi-billion dollar enterprises rarely have a chip on their conscience regarding dressing up a turd, beautifying it, processing, packaging, and marketing it as premium organic fare.
Let us slowly turn a corner back to Big Pharma.
No prevention, no cure
That’s right. The Big G’s of medicating nations. Where health is a cash cow opportunity worth exploiting.
One such problem stems from a lot of paid scientific research by corporations to release findings that hoodwink consumers.
Another problem is obviously from certain respected professionals in the medical field who endorse and swear by pharmaceuticals.
I have personally witnessed how patients are clawed in by opioids and hooked onto prescription drugs, sometimes unable to function coherently or holistically without them – even after their supposed ailments are cured.
The Columbia University Press published findings that prescription drugs are a leading cause of disability, disease, and death.
Everything from birth control pills and psychotropics to biologicals whilst approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), are severely under tested for adverse drug reactions.
In the text The Risks of Prescription Drugs edited by Donald W. Light it is mentioned that drugs cause more than 2.2 million hospitalisations, and 110,000 hospital-based deaths every year in the US alone. This is without bringing into account serious, adverse drug reactions at nursing homes or households.
Has the privatisation of risk become a calamity? Do current regulations and rules put the public at severe risk?
It is a global travesty that’s universally unchecked and rarely acknowledged that drug manufacturers continue to expand clinical risks by creating temporary relief inducing drugs as opposed to life-saving drugs.
Big Pharma is backed by medical professionals who earn their commissions and margins from them. Consider how many doctors get incentives and are paid handsomely by pharmaceutical companies to prescribe and push their products to patients and consumers.
We place our lives in the hands of doctors, ergo we would never dare question their professional views and judgement. We swallow any pill prescribed, with so many unaware of the adverse side-effects and disastrous repercussions of doing so, or even gauge the long-term reactions to our minds and bodies.
Why? Because we are not educated or qualified to ever doubt or question a medical professional, even if it concerns our own well-being and health. Because society has woven and imposed established systemic restrictions of differentiating a lay person from a professional. We are meant to place our trust, our lives, and the lives of our loved ones in the hands of practitioner savants, many who actually treat their patients like the dirt on their feet.
You can’t deny having had a life altering experience at a hospital or a clinic where the docs have played God.
I am not taking anything away from the many, relentless frontline workers and med pros who have selflessly risked their lives to protect and rise courageously to the demands of treating Covid patients, and without many of them the world would be crippled.
Therefore, let me iterate with specificity; there are medical professionals across the board who are a prime cornerstone of their vocation and craft.
I speak of the volume of folk who misuse their positions of professional prowess. And the corporations that corrupt their morality and integrity.
In conclusion
All this article hopes to elucidate is that we ought to think twice before getting caught in the vice of corporate martyrdom. No, seriously think twice because there is always more than meets the eye. The world is tilting upon a delicate fulcrum of reality in pandemic existence. Ask yourself who stands to gain, who stands to lose in the grander scheme of things?
Is it me?
Is it you?
Is it us?
Yet the richer get richer, the poor get poorer, and those in-between are the pushers and pullers who help those finely manicured hands rock the cradles of this world.
What if we cut off those hands?
Say what?
Just some vaccination for thought.
(The writer is the frontman and lyricist of Stigmata, a creative consultant and brand strategist by profession, a self-published author and poet, thespian, animal rescuer, podcaster, and fitness enthusiast)
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The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.
