Abstract
The dominant US response to Covid-19 has been shaped by the pharmaceutical industry. Doctors who proposed early treatments using vitamins and non-patented drugs were sanctioned, and their views were censored by corporate-liberal media. The new mRNA technology for vaccines was deployed with inconclusive testing results. Reports of vaccine-adverse events were marginalized. Underlying the population’s vulnerability to Covid-19 was a continuing increase in chronic illnesses, due to poor public health conditions, aggravated by the absence of universal healthcare. Dissident doctors whose response to Covid was censored found a platform with right-wing politicians and media. This gave enhanced political legitimacy, ironically, to the very forces that were most opposed to the kind of regulatory policies and system of universal healthcare that would have made the population less vulnerable.