Every time this chloroquine stuff comes up I just hear Jude Law's character from Contagion in my head saying "forsythia" over and over again in different sentence fragments.
Unfortunately the SEC isn't going to send men to arrest anybody this time.
That's one of the biggest issues with talking up miracle cures. Since it's not been proven, no one is gonna actually put their money behind drastically increasing production (pharma companies, etc. are not gonna put tens of millions of dollars on manufacturing a hunch), but the run on the existing supply means that a lot of people who actually benefited from it (for whom that existing supply was intended) now dont have access to it.
It's a complete lose lose. Even the hoarders don't benefit if it turns out to be beneficial because if it does turn out to be beneficial, production will be ramped up extremely quickly (since it's a known product and process with know side effects, etc...)
Compare that to food, where every calorie you buy today is one fewer calorie you need to buy in the future. Your need for food doesn’t change drastically before and after quarantine.
Watching it recently, the scene where Sanjay Gupta is facilitating an interview about the virus was like deja vu. He was literally on TV doing the same thing recently, but for real this time.
Otherwise Contagion is actually quite accurate.
edit: To clarify I do not mean to suggest that Trump profited financially like the fictional character in the movie, but rather Trump benefited by being able to tout a potential cure. Ie. Trump profited politically.
Trump's stake in hydroxychloroquine (which is a generic, and a bit safer than the chloroquine mentioned) is held via a trust and a mutual fund (so no direct investment) and is valued at less than $1,305, basically pointless.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-small-financial-ties-h...
Edit: Love how I'm getting downvoted for pointing out facts.
Which seems like an unreasonable leap to make given the copious evidence that he's acted to provide plausible deniability for Trump in the past.
Now a real president would have liquidated his investments and put them into a blind trust, but Trump doesn't have that sort of integrity. But it's a tiny amount in the scheme of things, I suspect he's grasping at straws and wants to dangerously rush opening the economy because he's more worried about no one going to his hotels or using his golf courses, not because of this tiny investment.
Which they "never received" but still paid the full amount over time.
It's a childish attempt to be able to say, nuh uh we didn't do it. Turns out that's all you really need.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-novartis...
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/09/novartis-paid-trumps-lawyer-...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/novartis-michael-cohen-1-2-mill...
Then after they sign the contract they meet with him and determine that he "would be unable to provide the services that Novartis had anticipated". Without details but it sounds like they said, "OK we gave you all this money, we don't really want legal advice, we want you to influence the President or tell us privileged information" and Cohen said "No way that is unethical." They then had to pay the rest of the contract since it could only be terminated for cause and "lawyer refuses to commit crimes" isn't valid cause.
So yeah, Novartis is one of many companies that makes generic HCQ and sells it at near cost. It's not a money maker for them at all. It definitely sounds like they were trying to do something unethical and illegal here, but how is the fact their lawyer refused to go along with it evidence of something wrong with Cohen or any of his other clients?
Like most people with any 401k retirement savings or other stock holdings (includes most people in the US), I have a mix of mutual funds and indexed funds that include stocks I've never heard of and don't care to know anything about. I bet I own part of some company that makes HCQ as well. I probably also own Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Defense, Offense, and a bunch of other horrible things, as probably nearly everyone that posts here does as well without realizing it.
We have no evidence that Trump profited financially, but from what we know of past leaks from the whitehouse I'd be surprised if nobody profited financially as well.