- Position‹4 of 6›
- COVID-19 is economically motivated
Disease is a lucrative business for pharmaceutical companies. During the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s, upwards of a $100 billion was spent on combative drugs. COVID-19 is a financial opportunity.
The argument
Pharmaceutical companies make huge amounts of money from pandemics. Even if a vaccine is produced, in countries like America companies will profit hugely off of millions of people paying for it. Author Gerald Posnet stated that “pharmaceutical companies view COVID-19 as a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity.”
Context
(ALERT: Visit the WHO for accurate information about the coronavirus pandemic)
Premises
Counter-arguments
"Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),1 and they overwhelmingly conclude that this COVID-19 originated in wildlife, as have so many other emerging pathogens."
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] That an industry profits from a pandemic is a claim about consequences, and benefiting from an event is not evidence of having caused it. [Rejecting P2] Anticipated revenue from a vaccine is a further consequence and describes an incentive rather than an act. No mechanism, document, laboratory or person is identified anywhere in the argument. [Rejecting P3] The quoted remark characterises how firms regard a commercial opportunity. It makes no claim about the virus's origin and cannot be read as one. As the counter-argument notes, published genome analyses by scientists in multiple countries point overwhelmingly to a wildlife origin, and the theory offers nothing at all against that evidence.