As we near the end of 2020 and harken the heralding of effective COVID vaccines for all by mid-2021, the pundits proclaim the end is near…..that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
Well, I can’t help but think of the line in Colum McCann’s 2013 novel TransAtlantic: “…..the light at the end of the tunnel generally belongs to the pharmaceutical companies.”
Never was that truer than it is now.
Millions of people will have been sickened and hundreds of thousands will have perished. People will have lost pay checks or their jobs or their entire businesses. Students will have lost extracurricular opportunities and more than an entire year of classroom instruction. Health care systems will have been overworked to the point of collapse.
But the drug companies will deliver. In record time, in record doses, with record efficacy. And, one must suppose, with record profits.
JER
ALL OVER THE MAP 