Pandemic, Inc.
Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick
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4.2 • 10 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“This startling, vital book deserves our attention.” —San Francisco Chronicle
For fans of War Dogs and Bad Blood, an explosive look inside the rush to profit from the COVID-19 pandemic, from the award-winning ProPublica reporter who saw it firsthand.
The United States federal government spent over $10 billion on medical protective wear and emergency supplies, yet as COVID-19 swept the nation, life-saving equipment such as masks, gloves, and ventilators was nearly impossible to find.
In this brilliant nonfiction thriller, called “revelatory” by The Washington Post, award-winning investigative reporter J. David McSwane takes us behind the scenes to reveal how traders, contractors, and healthcare companies used one of the darkest moments in American history to fill their pockets. Determined to uncover how this was possible, he spent over a year on private jets and in secret warehouses, traveling from California to Chicago to Washington, DC, to interview both the most treacherous of profiteers and the victims of their crimes.
Pandemic, Inc. is the story of the fraudster who signed a multi-million-dollar contract with the government to provide lifesaving PPE, and yet never came up with a single mask. The Navy admiral at the helm of the national hunt for additional medical resources. The Department of Health whistleblower who championed masks early on and was silenced by the government and conservative media. And the politician who callously slashed federal emergency funding and gutted the federal PPE stockpile.
Winner of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, McSwane connects the dots between backdoor deals and the spoils systems to provide the definitive account of how this pandemic was so catastrophically mishandled. Shocking and monumental, Pandemic, Inc. exposes a system that is both deeply rigged, and singularly American.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Swindlers, price gougers, and unscrupulous politicians profited from the Covid-19 pandemic, according to this eye-opening investigation from ProPublica journalist McSwane. He alleges that much of the $8 billion handed out by the Paycheck Protection Program went to "unsavory actors," and notes that senators Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler sold off their stock portfolios in February 2020 after hearing a classified briefing about the novel coronavirus. McSwane also reveals that, based on a recommendation by Jared Kushner, a Silicon Valley engineer with "no experience in medical supplies or government procurement" was given an $86 million contract by the state of New York to produce 1,450 ventilators and failed to deliver a single piece of equipment. In Dallas, McSwane visits the "crumbling" factory of Prestige Ameritech, one of the few American mask manufacturers, and meets an executive whose warnings about the dangers of relying on overseas companies for masks and other medical equipment went unheeded for more than a decade before Covid-19 hit. In San Antonio, McSwane talks with a man who repackages KN95 masks not approved for a medical setting and sells them to local hospitals. Lucid analysis and dogged reporting make this a startling exposé of how unfettered capitalism, startup culture, and government corruption exacerbated the worst effects of the pandemic.
