By C. Morris

Sifting through the vast deluge of lies we’ve been force-fed over the past 18 months, it’s hard to pick a contender for the worst. Two weeks to flatten the curve! Masks are 100% effective! Vaccines prevent transmission! We’re not going to mandate the jab!

And they wonder why public trust is eroding. Spoiler — it’s not because we’re all mouth-breathing science-haters.

Among the most irritating has to be the ol’ favorite of the ruling classes. Say it with me, “we’re all in this together”. Sure. We’re all in this together while Trudeau et al swan off to the G7 summit or the green wet dream of COP26. We’re all in this together while Jason Kenney wines and dines, Ford has his kids over and our reconciliation-dodging PM goes cottaging.

You’re masking up just to walk to the washroom in your local Tims and they’re taking the red-eye to St. Barts. But guys, it’s cool. We’re all in this together.

We’re clearly not all in this together. Those of us unfortunate enough not to have public office or the ear of government are in crisis. We lost our jobs, our businesses, our mental well being, our security, our autonomy, our rights, our hope, our future.

On the other side of that apocalyptic coin, those at the top were all about the gains.

Since life as we know it ended in March 2020, corporate interests have been gleefully rubbing their sanitized hands over an ever-growing pile of money. From Amazon to Pfizer, there’s a very large contingent of powerful players who are banking on an endless pandemic and making a tidy profit from fear.

Team Big

Let’s start with the worst offenders, the Big Pharma Boys.

If Satan had a drug dealer, it would be Pfizer. When Covid reared its ugly bat head, our government entrusted our health and well being to a company with a less than stellar track record. From killing kids in Nigeria (see Trovan and ceftriaxone controversy) to pushing unsafe and off-label drugs, there’s so much blood on Pfizer’s hands, their board meetings must be chaired by Lady Macbeth.

Never mind. The bad guys get their just rewards, right? If by ‘just rewards’ you mean ‘US$33.5 billion in vaccine revenue’ then yeah, I guess so.

And just in case you thought a class action lawsuit from the vaccine-damaged might make a dent on those profits, think again. Pfizer and their cohorts are protected from liability this time around so while you’re triple mortgaging your house to pay for post-embolism aftercare they don’t have to chip in a dime.

They’ve thought of all the angles too — one of the pesky (but rare! So very rare!) side effects from the jabs is cardiomyopathy. But you can always rely on the Pfizer team to turn a negative into a positive …on the balance sheet at least. Sales of their cardiomyopathy meds, Vyndaqel and Vyndamax, are up a whopping 77%. But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence (there’s a lot of them around).

There’s good news for Moderna fans too. Their stock has risen by more than 700% since February 2020, helping to push CEO Stéphane Bancel’s net worth to around $4 billion.

Add in the head honchos of companies like BioNTech and CanSino Biologics, and there are now 9 new pharma billionaires — a fact CNN reports with great glee. And so they should, considering that big pharma props up mainstream media’s ad revenue year after year.

Billionaires build back better

But, of course, it’s not just pharma that’s going big. The pandemic sprinkled its magical money dust over a range of industries. Big Retail did pretty well too, as did Big Tech and Big Grocery.

Amazon and Walmart led the charge, picking up an extra US$10.7 billion between them in 2020 alone. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, already the world’s richest man, shored up his title by adding over $75 million to his fortune last year.

Speaking of rich dudes, US billionaires increased their total net worth by over $600 billion last year. This uber-exclusive Covid club includes former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Tesla magnate Elon Musk.

North of the border, it was the same story. Canadian billionaires — including Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke and Loblaws owner Galen Weston — didn’t miss out, netting over $37 billion in 2020.

To put that in context, Canadian small businesses are now in debt to the tune of $135 billion and, almost 2 years into the pandemic, less than half are seeing normal sales volumes.

Eat the rich

Does the above necessarily mean the vaccines and associated pandemic measures are a societal evil? Of course not. It’d be falling headfirst into a logical fallacy to claim otherwise and there’s plenty of solid reporting already done on that particular ground.

But it’s not foolish to question government policy based on the fact that it is moving vast amounts of public money into the very suspect coffers of the vaccine makers. It’s not foolish to ask why Walmart and CostCo stayed open throughout repeated lockdowns, welcoming hundreds of consumers, while the mom n’ pop shop in my local town that sees about 10 customers on a good day was forced to close. It’s not foolish to ask why the accelerated earnings enjoyed by billionaires failed to trickle down to the workers in the warehouses.

It’s also dishonest to pretend that those at the top aren’t motivated by their bank balance and that they aren’t willing to embrace some very dark philosophies to keep those profits coming.

We have a right to ask questions. We have a right to voice our concerns. We have a right to protest. That money was earned off our work, entrusted to our children, and meant to build a better society for future generations.

Instead we’re living through the biggest wealth transfer in our lifetime and where are those ardent socialists banging the drum about equality? They’re wearing ‘Tax the Rich’ dresses to the Met Gala, flocked by a dozen masked assistants.

So brace yourselves — it’s surely only a matter of time before Trudeau turns up to his next press conference, flocked by non-masked billionaires, and wearing a glittery jumpsuit emblazoned with the words ‘we’re all in this together’.