The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has metastasized into a full-blown, global public health crisis. Coinciding with an impending economic collapse that may generate levels of unemployment  not seen since the Great Depression, the last several weeks have seen governments utilize emergency measures to legislate reforms unthinkable only weeks ago. Corporations have taken advantage of crisis conditions to lobby for unprecedented bailouts with few strings attached, or to seek out profitable ventures from the vulnerability of public institutions.

Within the American health-care sector, the COVID-19 crisis has revealed the irrationality of for-profit insurance systems that leave millions underinsured and incapable of accessing affordable treatment, as well as the systemic weaknesses of public institutions racked by decades of cuts. Within this context, investment banks in the United States have been pressuring drug and medical supply firms to elevate prices on potential treatments, for example, in order to derive a profit from the current crisis.

Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism provides a useful lens to understand the current moment. As she expounds in a recent video for the Intercept, “During moments of cataclysmic change, the previously unthinkable suddenly becomes reality.”