J. David McSwane - Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick

Winner of Harvards Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting

J. David McSwane

Pandemic, Inc.

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

An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Copyright 2022 by J. David McSwane

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Interior design by Dana Sloan

Jacket design by Claire Sullivan

Jacket photographs by Adobe Stock, Depositphotos, and Shutterstock

Author photograph by Claudio Papapietro

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022930533

ISBN 978-1-9821-7774-4

ISBN 978-1-9821-7776-8 (ebook)

For those who managed full-time jobs and full-time parenting,

and for the children who endured their parents

I KNOW WHAT youre thinking.

Why, after all we suffered, would I read a book about the COVID-19 pandemic? I already experienced it!

Not like this, you havent. The story that will unfold in these pages is as outrageous as it is true. What happened to us was unacceptable and heartbreaking, yes, but I do not wish to depress you further. No, anger is more useful than despair.

My goal in writing this book is twofold. First, to make some sense of the larger system churning over our heads and its role in our nations misstepsthat is to say, unfettered capitalism and its byproduct, greed.

Second, for posterity. Some unbelievably stupid and tragic things happened. The story of how Americas obsession with capitalism left us for dead while pirates plundered is at once anger-provoking and yet, at times, so twisted that all we can do is laugh. I managed to get a front-row seat to some of it. I pray that this story will serve as a guide to future generations on what exactly they shouldnt do if faced with such a crisis.

The purpose of this book is not to retrace a definitive account of all things COVID, nor is it to remind people of all the disappointments and horror that we by now have drowned out with Netflix, alcohol, and Peloton bikes. Ill spare you the grotesque postmortem and thumbsucker dissertations on policy, economics, and global trade.

Instead, I invite you on a journey through the shady networks of brokers, scammers, investors, and profiteers who did insane things to get rich while our nation suffered an incalculable loss of life and global standing. They are the inhabitants of a world we encouraged, we created, long before we elected a documented swindler to the Oval Office. This is who we are, though I pray it is not all we can be.

It began on a reporting assignment in April 2020, which involved a mask broker and a private jet. Upon my return, I felt what Id seen was too bizarre to be molded into the conventions of routine journalism. In fact, so much of what happened, from the White House down to city hall, begged for something more. I set out on an immersive first-person quest of sorts to get it all down. In doing so, I defy some convention. Investigative reporters are not usually invited to crack wise, though these were, as we know, unprecedented times. I have in many instances forgone the antiquated notion of wishy-washy two-sides reporting that fails to hold to account partisan hacks and welcomes false equivalency. I neither belong to nor curry favor with any political party, though neither do I profess to be some robotic arbiter of objectivity. There was one party and one administration handling the arrival of the coronavirus, and its failure to rise to the occasion is definitive and damning. I have treated this legacy with the reverence it deserves. Members of the other party also made mistakes, and I have pointed them out.

I have resisted the notion that capitalism itself is to blame for all of this, though I understand the temptation. President Donald Trumps admitted effort to downplay the virus to prevent a stock market scare is a strong point to consider. We will never know how many lives might have been spared if the president were as concerned with charts of rising American deathswhich he dismissed as it is what it isas he was charts-tracking the S&P 500 Index.

It is impossible to disentangle the callous and inept response of the Trump administration from the broader social, political, and economic forces that also contributed to Americas failure. Can we realistically cast blame on our system entirely when it is unfathomable that either Presidents George W. Bush or Barack Obama would have handled the pandemic as poorly as Trump did?

To piece these stories together, I reviewed many thousands of records and interviewed more than one hundred people, mostly on the record. With the exception of one already published example, I do not quote anonymous sources or allow such a source to stake a significant claim. Any background conversations I had served the purpose of bulletproofing a certain context or to help me better understand a complex issue or timeline.

There are scenes and chapters in this book that draw from what I saw and heard and what is in my notes and voice memos. I could not be everywhere, however, so I rely at times on others reporting at ProPublica, the New York Times, the Washington Post, STAT News, Kaiser Health News, and many more. I am grateful for the work of these many journalists, and Ive cited them often.

If this sort of tale still sounds appealing, strap in. Our journey begins, as with so many disappointments, in Washington, D.C.

ROBERT STEWART JR. STRODE WITH PURPOSE through the exit of the private wing of Dulles International Airport, a glinting Legacy 450 Flexjet whirring ahead of us on the tarmac. He turned to offer a caveat.

Im talking with you against the advice of my attorney, he said.

It was the morning of Saturday, April 26, 2020the year a plague upended our world and I fell into the absurd realm of those trying to profit from the despair. Stewart was sturdy, early thirties, filling out a tailored and shiny gray suit. On his lapel, he wore an American flag pendant emblazoned with the word, in all caps, VETERAN. I couldnt see his face behind his mask, or through my fog-filled eyeglasses, but his tone registered as a blend of bravado and trepidation.

It felt like foreboding, as if embracing a dare to avoid a truth. I pictured him as a boy, winking from atop the high dive at his friends below, knowing the belly flop hes about to perform will leave him red and stung, yet warm with the perverse validation of having done it. The inquiry that led me to be here was honest, though I cant say altogether naive. I suppose I had dared him, in a way.