Pandemic, Inc.

Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick

J. David McSwane

• Publisher: Atria/One Signal Publishers
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781982177751
• eBook ISBN:
  9781982177768
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Government & Business
• Index: Politics & International Relations

“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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Author’s Note
• Chapter 1: The Private Jet
• Chapter 2: “Hindsight Just Isn’t What It Used to Be”
• Chapter 3: “We’re in Deep Shit”
• Chapter 4: Into a Gunfight with a Box of Tissues
• Chapter 5: “It’s Like Being on eBay with Fifty Other States”
• Chapter 6: “You Might Be Buying a Ferrari”
• Chapter 7: Release the Billions
• Chapter 8: Buccaneers and Pirates
• Chapter 9: Airborne
• Chapter 10: History Rhymes
• Chapter 11: “Juanita Ramos Is Either a Stripper in Atlanta or a Native American Medicine Woman”
• Chapter 12: How to Make Millions Selling Masks, in Three Easy Steps!
• Chapter 13: “I’m Not Going to Take Any of This”
• Chapter 14: “It Works as Hand Sanitizer, Too!”
• Chapter 15: “Greg Abbott Cares About Greg Abbott”
• Chapter 16: “What’s Your Problem, Man?”
• Chapter 17: Money for Nothing, Checks for Free
• Chapter 18: Dazed and Confused
• Chapter 19: Lucrative Lies
• Chapter 20: Underlying Conditions
• Chapter 21: “Capitalism, Baby”
• Chapter 22: The Death Pits
• Chapter 23: A Pirate Walks the Plank
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright