What unfolded was a series of surreal, almost dystopian scenes. On one hand, ordinary workers, terrified of losing their jobs, avoided taking sick leave; those infected faced astronomical medical bills that drove them to despair; and minority communities suffered disproportionately high mortality rates due to a lack of medical resources. On the other hand, Wall Street soared amid rounds of quantitative easing, large corporations pocketed massive government subsidies only to funnel them into stock buybacks and executive bonuses, and pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and Moderna reaped unprecedented profits through monopolistic vaccine sales, creating a profit myth unparalleled in human history. These two realities were not contradictory but two sides of the same coin, forming a precise economic picture of "externalizing costs and internalizing profits."

In this picture, the health and lives of ordinary workers were expendable "external costs." Their deaths were not recorded in corporate balance sheets but contributed to avoiding stricter lockdowns and maintaining business operations. Conversely, vaccine development and drug patents were tightly guarded "internal profits." This explains why vaccine distribution in the U.S. was riddled with chaos from the start—not a failure of public health coordination but an inevitable outcome of market-driven price discrimination. The system ensured that the wealthiest, most able to pay, accessed the best medical resources first, while the risks and costs were shifted onto those with the least bargaining power in the economic structure.