{"id":11829,"date":"2021-10-06T05:59:55","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T12:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=11829"},"modified":"2021-10-12T15:50:22","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T22:50:22","slug":"a-narrative-to-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=11829","title":{"rendered":"A Narrative to Come"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mainstream narrative about SARS<\/abbr>-CoV<\/abbr>-2 has itself mutated many times, but it seems headed towards a crisis from which it will not recognizably survive. I believe that, as progressives<\/q> try to get out from under their own responsibility for that narrative and for the homicidal and otherwise inhumane effects of the policies developed and defended by it, they will ascribe principal<\/em> blame to what they will call Big Pharma<\/q>, and they will insist that the lesson to be drawn is that the power of the state must be extended<\/em> — to control more thoroughly the development and allocation of medical treatment, to prevent commercial interests (in general) from influencing supposedly scientific research by selective funding, and to prevent commercial interests from influencing state policy.<\/p>

Some large pharmaceutical firms have played a decidedly unhealthy<\/em> rôle in the response of important institutions to SARS<\/abbr>-CoV<\/abbr>-2. At this stage, I would be less surprised to discover that some of the persons at these firms have been guilty of crimes against humanity than that they were simply bunglers. But, when someone says Big Pharma<\/q> (with or without capitalization), I don't know that he or she refers to just these firms. Nor, for that matter, am I sure that only large<\/em> firms have been a cause of the problem, though I am quite sure that not all<\/em> firms are responsible.<\/p>

Some people had or have been primed to blame what they call Big Pharma<\/q> from very early into the pandemic, if not indeed from the outset. Until recently, most of the political left wrote and spoke of Big Pharma<\/q> as an enemy, demanding such things as quicker expiration of drug patents, monopsonistic bargaining by the state to drive-down drug prices, or overt price ceilings. The first time that I encountered the expression Big Pharma<\/q> was in AD 2000, when Albert Arnold (Al<\/q>) Gore jr<\/abbr> used it as he made attacks on the pharmaceutical industry a key feature of his Presidential campaign. And people not<\/em> on the political left had been increasingly worried about the pharmaceutical industry as they saw social perverts such as William Henry (Bill<\/q>) Gates III develop an interest and involvement in pharmaceuticals as part of a broader vision to remake mankind.<\/p>

But I think that it is far more reasonable to see the firms, large and small, pharmaceutical or otherwise, that have behaved problematically or downright evilly concerning SARS<\/abbr>-CoV<\/abbr>-2 not as masterminds<\/em> but as amongst the many mercenaries<\/em> and whores<\/em>.<\/p>

In any case, the changes that I predict that progressives<\/q> will demand would in practice mean that medicine would be further socialized and made bureaucratic, that the selective funding of the state would be almost the sole determinant of prevalent, ostensibly scientific conclusions, and that those in the non-commercial commanding heights of society would have still greater control over the political process. Each of these changes would deepen<\/em> the the fundamental<\/em> problems that we observe connected to the present mainstream narrative and to state policy concerning SARS<\/abbr>-CoV<\/abbr>-2. The left should not be tolerated in some further attempt to suppress dissent and deviation.<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mainstream narrative about SARS-CoV-2 has itself mutated many times, but it seems headed towards a crisis from which it will not recognizably survive. I believe that, as progressives try to get out from under their own responsibility for that narrative and for the homicidal and otherwise inhumane effects of the policies developed and defended […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,318,4],"tags":[1607,1561,1562],"class_list":["post-11829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-ethics-philosophy","category-public","tag-big-pharma","tag-covid-19","tag-sars-cov-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11829"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11835,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11829\/revisions\/11835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}