Just because I’m paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me
Posted on Wednesday 29th April 2009
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the current gnashing-of-teeth and rending-of-garments over a few cases of porcine influenza mutating to infect humans will be hot on your conciousness.
If you bear with me, the following does make sense. One conspiracy theory is that panic over the recent influenza outbreak has been orchestrated by pharmaceutical companies for financial gain.
OK, so now for a entirely speculative hypothesis. Cast your minds back 5 years. The media was agog with dire warnings of a bird flu pandemic. It was predicted to kill millions of people and be the greatest natural disaster of the new millenium. Naturally rather than use reason, everyone panicked and Western governments spent millions of dollars stockpiling antivirals, the only drugs proven to treat active influenza infection. One manufacturer made a rather tidy profit from this alone, and upscaled production to meet insatiable demand.
When the anticipated Armageddon never occurred, everyone just seemed to forget the hysteria, and so drug stocks gathered dust and aged. These batches were rapidly approaching their expiry dates and there was no incentive or appetite to replace them. Cynics could easily jump to the conclusion that, fearing a loss in revenue, the pharmas have strategically masterminded and fuelled the current furore. After all, guess which drugs are being touted as mankind’s saviour yet again.
So if you haven’t already rushed to your broker, it might be worth picking up some shares in these companies right now. Tipsters have a feeling their value will increase very soon!
