Day 53 Profits and Pride; or, What Money Is and What Money Isn’t

The next time I chair a group meeting, I’m going to start it with one question.

What’s your agenda?

Reading about the races for both a vaccine for coronavirus and a treatment for coronavirus sickened me this morning. Sorry to have to start with such dismal news.

Laurie Garrett predicted the coronavirus. Frank Bruni asks “What Does She Foresee Next?”

Straight up, she “expects years of death and ‘collective rage.’” That makes sense. Facts, and the feelings they engender. Got it. “What Garrett has been warning most direly about—in her 1994 best seller, “The Coming Plague,” and in subsequent books and speeches, including TED Talks—is a pandemic like the current one.”

Simple math. 2020 – 1994 = 26 years. Yep, more than a quarter of a century.

“The problem is bigger than Trump and older than his presidency. America has never been sufficiently invested in public health. The riches and renown go mostly to physicians who find new and better ways to treat heart disease, cancer and the like. The big political conversation is about individuals’ access to health care.

“But what about the work to keep our air and water safe for everyone, to design policies and systems for quickly detecting outbreaks, containing them and protecting entire populations? Where are the rewards for the architects of that?”

Ms. Garrett, chillingly, remembers her time as a fellow at Harvard’s School of Public Health. “The medical school is all marble, with these grand columns. The school of public health is this funky building, the ugliest possible architecture, with the ceilings falling in.”

The big expose in this morning’s Times was titled, “Profits and Pride at Stake, the Race for a Vaccine Intensifies.”

Profits?!?!? I sputtered. Pride?!?!? I gagged.

Here’s the subtitle: “Governments, companies and academic labs are accelerating their efforts amid geopolitical crosscurrents, questions about safety and the challenges of producing enough doses for billions of people.”

See what I mean? Agendas all. In fact, agendas from the personal to the professional, Agendas A-Z.

“While scientists and doctors talk about finding a ‘global vaccine,’ national leaders emphasize immunizing their own populations first. Mr. Trump said he was personally in charge of Operation Warp Speed to get 300 million doses into American arms by January.”

Staggering. American arms? American arms?!?!? And, besides, there are 331 million Americans. What are we doing about the other 31 million, huh? I know. Details.

“George Q. Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School, said thinking country by country rather than in global terms would be foolhardy since it ‘would involve squandering the early doses of vaccine on a large number of individuals at low risk, rather than covering as many high-risk individuals globally’—health care workers and older adults—‘to stop the spread’ around the world.”

Okay, Team Agenda, I am officially writing a new hashtag this morning and inviting everyone who cares about humanity and the planet we inhabit to use it every chance you get.

#GlobalVaccine
#GlobalVaccine
#GlobalVaccine

So let’s be truly clear, shall we? There are not American arms or Indian arms or Argentinean arms or any other qualifier for arms. There are arms on the bodies of precious humans, arms through which we might, if we do it right, deliver a #GlobalVaccine.

I am ashamed of the nationalism that’s rising. #GlobalVaccine

“Seven of the roughly 90 projects being pursued by governments, pharmaceutical makers, biotech innovators and academic laboratories have reached the stage of clinical trials. With political leaders—not least President Trump—increasingly pressing for progress, and with big potential profits at stake for the industry, drug makers and researchers have signaled that they are moving ahead at unheard-of speeds.”

Big potential profits there may be, but they are a cheap shot of an agenda. Profits? Profits?!?!?! When there are lives at stake. How can we lose sight of this? How? The lives that are at stake are our own, and those of our parents, our children, our extended families, our co-workers, our neighbors—all across the globe.

I’m ashamed of money even being mentioned in this context. #GlobalVaccine

“Even when promising solutions are found, there are big challenges to scaling up production and distribution. Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, whose foundation is spending $250 million to help spur vaccine development, has warned about a critical shortage of a mundane but vital component: medical glass. Without sufficient supplies of the glass, there will be too few vials to transport the billions of doses that will ultimately be needed.”

Did we learn nothing from the continuing shortage of PPE? Nothing?!?!? If we know now that we will need such as glass vials, and that retooling manufacturing to produce them will take some time and money, why aren’t we gearing up?!?!?

I am ashamed at our deliberate ignorance. #GlobalVaccine

“The scale of the problem and the demand for a quick solution are bound to create tensions between the profit motives of the pharmaceutical industry, which typically fights hard to wring the most out of their investments in new drugs, and the public’s need for quick action to get any effective vaccines to as many people as possible.”

Okay, so here’s some hard truth about money, Beloved. #GlobalVaccine

First, it has taken on mythic proportions.

Money itself isn’t mythic. It’s small bits of metal and paper. The mythos around money has been spun by the financial markets and the political usury of the past few decades. Open your eyes, Beloved. Money only has the power you give it. #GlobalVaccine

Second, money itself is neutral like electricity.

Money can be used for both good and evil just like electricity—it can dry your hair or electrocute you. The uses of money depend upon our choices around it, choices, I might add, that we make every day by how we use it. #GlobalVaccine

Third, money is never prophylactic.

Regardless, our collective behavior would indicate a belief that money is a great preventative. Look at insurance, as just one example. Every year, we in the U.S. pay obscenely too much for health insurance—on the off chance that we will get ill. There is a superstitious element to it. It’s as though, if we pay for health insurance, it ensures that we won’t get sick. Uh, coronavirus, anyone? #GlobalVaccine

Can you hear the righteous, religious cackling in your ears, too? They haul out 1 Timothy 6:10 and wave it around like a MAGA banner, usually misquoting it as “Money is the root of all evil.” Told ya! Jab, jab, poke, poke.

Let’s start that over. The quote is properly, “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

It’s misdirected, misapplied, misused love that is causing the problem.

What if we took all that unrequited love—for money can’t love us back—and applied it to, say, a #GlobalVaccine?

Dr. Dan Barouch, the director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a professor at Harvard Medical School said, “We are not racing against each other, we are racing the virus. What we need is a global vaccine—because an outbreak in one part of the world puts the rest of the world at risk.”

Here’s another idea, perhaps impractical, or impracticable, but since I had the idea, it’s mine to put into the world, and hopefully others will get on board.

When you studied World War II as a kid, did you learn about the neutrality of Switzerland? I did. I’m not sure that even now I understand exactly how that worked, but go with the concept for a moment please.

What I’m wondering is, if there is a country in the world, just one, say, Iceland or New Zealand, which isn’t strangled by the global PushMePullYou of pride or profits that could act as a landing place for a #GlobalVaccine as Switzerland did in the 1940s?

Could Iceland or New Zealand or Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole set up a world bank for a #GlobalVaccine? Could that welcoming-to-everyone, neutral place aggregate research, and coordinate worldwide production of both vaccines and the supplies needed to deliver them?

Beloved, this miniscule pathogen has brought us collectively and humbly to our knees. There is no wall, no border, no nation that will make any of us safe without a #GlobalVaccine. Scientists are the ones who are talking about a #GlobalVaccine; politicians are not.

Margaret Renkl wrote an exquisite essay on flickers, a bird species she observes in the southern United States. It’s called “Now We Know How Quickly Our Trashed Planet Can Heal.” Her point is, “The pandemic is teaching us that all is not yet lost.” She was writing about the environment.

Profits and pride notwithstanding, I think it’s past time to get the diplomatic service involved, too. Maybe that way, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, we’ll create a #GlobalVaccine in no time, and wouldn’t that be love in action?

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

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