we've got a fun topic to get into that's this is kind of like a single topic episode and it's

it's been long coming um we've been talking a lot about the vaccines and the technology

and the trials and the rollout and the issues with equity but there's so much more about

the vaccines that we haven't even been able

to scratch the surface on. And it's, it's stuff that's really kind of buried under a lot of the

noise of like, when can I get the vaccine? What can I do once I get the vaccine? What parties can I go to?

When can I see grandma? Like, what are we going to do about restrictions? All of that stuff,

which is inescapable right now, basically. Like, you cannot move an inch in any sort of media space without seeing, like, all of these questions about the personal end of vaccine distribution.

Right. It's really individuated, yeah, because it's all about, like, how you as the consumer can

get it. But that kind of, yeah, because it's all about, like, how you as the consumer can get it.

But that kind of, like, ignores and hides the more structural aspects of the vaccine distribution.

You know, there's an underrepresented part of the story, which is exactly how does the state get the vaccine.

Yeah, how does a state get the vaccine?

Yeah. Right. And also just, I the thing is like to think about it this way, which is that the vaccine is this, you know, miraculous substance, this resource

unlike any other. And when you have something like that, you know, obviously all of the human interest stories are going to be about how people get it and so on.

But it also is always going to have something to tell us about the way that power works in the world and in our political economy.

And I think what this story that we're going to unfold today suggests is that the way that things have been set up thus far was already designed in a way that allowed private firms to like reap the rewards and to actually make profits by denying needed resources to people in large swaths of the planet.

But what's happening now, if things sort of continue in this vein, is that the people who

already sort of won under the arrangements that we have are actually leveraging this pandemic to create a new form of power for themselves,

which is, in a way, it's far more sinister than anything I actually sort of imagined in the world of

just sort of like profits.

Right.

...