‘Nothing in the corporate world is ever as bad as it seems, it is always worse’

• IT is no coincidence that Pfizer boss Dr Albert Bourla’s recent media blitz touting his product corresponds with the launch of the latest flu bug.

According to Dr Bourla (who is a vet!) the entire population of the world is going to need repeat prescriptions from his company for ever as each new bug is “discovered”, with each preceding vaccine becoming obsolete almost as quickly as it is administered.

Like medieval quacks peddling expensive solutions to problems of their own invention, the pharmaceutical industry has quickly discovered that there is no difference between panic about a genuine emergency and panic about an imaginary one: a hysterical crowd has always been good for business, ask any popular entertainment or sports promoter.

It is impossible not to be sceptical about those orchestrating all this plunder; dozy ministers, their fairground barkers in the press, squads of behavioural science weirdos; because even if it is inadvertent it is staggeringly stupid nevertheless.

Nothing in the corporate world is ever as bad as it seems, it is always worse. And when a tsunami of easy money is pouring from panic-stricken or corrupt governments, cynical opportunism is boundless.

As each new financial catastrophe unfolds the money-junkies overdose every time, and in its latest incarnation the greed pandemic will turn out to have been far deadlier than the flu pandemic underwriting it.

As the dust settles millions will have been impoverished and or rendered homeless by all this, having been cleaned out (again) by the usual suspects fleeing across the embers with armfuls of cash like looters escaping a riot.

MARTIN KENNEDY, W1