COVID-19 & Disaster Capitalism – Part I

Abstract

In this three-part series we examine the extent to which disaster capitalism and the medical-industrial complex turned the pandemic into a 'golden' opportunity to enhance corporate profits which took place, in large part, at the taxpayer's expense through appropriation of public resources. In the first part we examine the rise of this predatory social ideology and the strategies its adherents have employed to assure its success. In the second part we examine the social and economic consequences of disaster capitalism during the COVID-19 pandemic which, in the end, led to the preventable loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives. In the final article we point to the necessity of broad reform not only of the healthcare system but of American democracy and raise challenging questions as to how this should be accomplished and, importantly, whether the American public is up to the task.