Can we get a vaccine early? How the rich are preparing for coronavirus | The Business Standard
Skip to main content
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
    • GOVT. Ad
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
The Business Standard

Thursday
June 08, 2023

Sign In
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
    • GOVT. Ad
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
THURSDAY, JUNE 08, 2023
Can we get a vaccine early? How the rich are preparing for coronavirus

Bloomberg Special

Max Abelson
04 March, 2020, 03:40 pm
Last modified: 04 March, 2020, 05:59 pm

Related News

  • CAAB lifts Covid-19 restrictions on international air travel
  • Mirza Fakhrul hospitalised after testing Covid positive
  • G7 plans new vaccine effort for developing nations, Yomiuri reports
  • Sajida Foundation hosts webinar on impact of Covid-19 on low, middle-income countries
  • Advisory committee lowers Covid alert level, but cautions against Mideast respiratory disease

Can we get a vaccine early? How the rich are preparing for coronavirus

Langone dials hospital experts, others hunt supplies or meds

Max Abelson
04 March, 2020, 03:40 pm
Last modified: 04 March, 2020, 05:59 pm
File Photo: A medical worker in protective suit inspects a CT scan image at a ward of Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan, the epicentre of the novel coronavirus outbreak, in Hubei province, China February 24, 2020. China Daily via Reuters
File Photo: A medical worker in protective suit inspects a CT scan image at a ward of Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan, the epicentre of the novel coronavirus outbreak, in Hubei province, China February 24, 2020. China Daily via Reuters

One investor may fly to Idaho with or without family. A doctor in a Colorado ski town is soothing wealthy clients who want a cure. And one New Yorker called up the hospital with his name on it.

Like everyone across the US, the rich are bracing for a deadly coronavirus outbreak. Ken Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot Inc., watched President Donald Trump's press conference and wondered if the media was overplaying the risk -- but he also made two well-placed phone calls from his winter outpost in North Palm Beach.

One was to a top executive of NYU Langone Health, and the other was to a top scientist there. Both were reassuring.

"What I've been told by people who are smarter than me in disease is, 'As of right now it's a bad flu,'" said Langone, an 84-year-old who loves capitalism so much that he wrote a book called "I Love Capitalism!" He plans to come back to New York this month for an appointment. If he happens to feel sick, he will go to NYU Langone, and said he'd expect no special treatment.

Some billionaires, bankers and other members of the US elite are calm, others are getting anxious and everyone is washing their hands. But the rich can afford to prepare for a pandemic with perquisites, like private plane rides out of town, calls with world-leading experts and access to luxurious medical care.

"It's been a full-on war-room situation over here," said Jordan Shlain, an internist and managing partner of Private Medical, a high-end concierge service. The company is procuring hundreds of full-body coverings for work that includes visits in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and New York. "We have to beg, borrow or steal. Well, not steal -- beg, borrow and pay."

Just Asking

Tim Kruse, a doctor who makes house calls in Aspen, Colorado, said "the wealthy aren't going to necessarily have access to things that the common person is not going to have access to." But that hasn't stopped them from asking if they can get their hands on a coronavirus vaccine. "The answer is no. They just want to know."

Confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide have passed 88,000, and more than 2,900 people have died. The World Health Organization raised its global risk assessment for the illness to "very high." Fear over the economic fallout has upended global markets, plunging Treasury yields to all-time lows and giving the S&P 500 index its worst week since the 2008 financial crisis.

One co-founder of a major hedge fund, who asked not to be named discussing his plans, said he'd run in the other direction if his peers start fleeing into doomsday bunkers. He might fly to a house he has in Italy, a country that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises Americans to avoid. Widespread panic, he added, would only make plane tickets cheaper.

Charles Stevenson, an investor who was the longtime board president at a Park Avenue co-op that's home to several billionaires, has been staying in Southampton.

"I don't feel concerned at the moment -- it's not near me right now," Stevenson said. "If people in the village have coronavirus, I'd get out of here." He'd fly to Idaho and close himself off in a cabin, he said, and his family could join him if they wanted. "That becomes a personal choice of theirs."

Wealthy couples who aren't used to actually spending time together are in for trouble, according to Mitchell Moss, who studies urban policy and planning at New York University.

"This is going to destroy the marriages of the rich," said Moss. "All these husbands and wives who travel will now have to spend time with the person they're married to."

Davos Nightmare

Trump has predicted the virus will disappear "like a miracle," while Democrats outlined demands for funding that include a guarantee of an affordable vaccine. Face masks don't effectively prevent the public from catching coronavirus, according to US Surgeon General Jerome Adams, though health-care providers are at risk if they can't get them. "Seriously people," Adams wrote on Twitter, "STOP BUYING MASKS!"

Jewel Mullen, associate dean for health equity at the University of Texas at Austin's Dell Medical School, said millions of Americans can't afford to stock up on supplies, miss work or have a steady doctor to call for advice -- even on a good day.

"Resources like money and transportation and information give people head starts on protective and preventive measures, and can help create more comfortable scenarios for people to cope with disasters," said Mullen, an internist and epidemiologist who was commissioner of Connecticut's Department of Public Health. "That's where you really get to see disparate needs."

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest bank in the US, stopped employees from going on any inessential business trips. It joined a string of other corporate giants in restricting travel, splitting up teams and traders to different locations, or quarantining staff. Jamie Dimon, the bank's chief executive officer, said not long before the announcement that he had dreamed he and other billionaires contracted the virus during January's World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

"I had this nightmare that somehow in Davos, all of us who went there got it, and then we all left and spread it," Dimon said during the bank's annual investor day. "The only good news from that is that it might have just killed the elite." His audience chuckled.

Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg.com, and is published by special syndication arrangement.

Top News

Coronavirus / Vaccine / COVID-19

Comments

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Published comments are readers’ own views and The Business Standard does not endorse any of the readers’ comments.

Top Stories

  • Photo: Collected
    No govt agency will file cases to harass others to ensure free, fair polls: Law minister
  • Photo: BSS
    Income Tax Bill 2023 placed in Parliament
  • Bangladesh must suspend pilot project to return Rohingyas to Myanmar: UN expert
    Bangladesh must suspend pilot project to return Rohingyas to Myanmar: UN expert

MOST VIEWED

  • The Schuko manufacturing plant in Bad Laer, Germany, on 26 May. Photographer: Ben Kilb/Bloomberg
    Germany is running out of workers, putting growth in jeopardy
  • OPEC’s logo at its Vienna headquarters.Photographer: JOE KLAMAR/AFP via Getty Images
    Saudi Arabia's solo oil production cut is a risky strategy
  • Photo: Bloomberg
    Backlash against weaponised dollar is growing across the world
  • Strategic Petroleum Reserve storage in Freeport, Texas.Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images North America
    Opec+ challenge is overcoming an internal squabble
  • Illustration: TBS
    Why low interest rates will return — again and again
  • What do an ATM and a voting booth have in common? Not much in Turkey this time.Photographer: Moe Zoyari/Bloomberg
    Hey, stupid. For Turks, it wasn't just the economy

Related News

  • CAAB lifts Covid-19 restrictions on international air travel
  • Mirza Fakhrul hospitalised after testing Covid positive
  • G7 plans new vaccine effort for developing nations, Yomiuri reports
  • Sajida Foundation hosts webinar on impact of Covid-19 on low, middle-income countries
  • Advisory committee lowers Covid alert level, but cautions against Mideast respiratory disease

Features

Our failure to prevent curious onlookers from gathering around the herds is a hindrance to mitigating human-elephant conflict. Photo: Mohammed Mostafa Feeroz

Bleak and desolate? The future of elephants in northern Bangladesh

4h | Earth
Apple does not need to make mixed reality seem exciting to get customers through its doors. They’re turning up in droves anyway, to buy new iPhones or to visit the Genius Bar for IT support. Photo: Bloomberg

Apple has 520 reasons its $3,499 headset will prevail

6h | Panorama
Md Shamsuddoha. Sketch: TBS

'Extreme heat waves are here to stay'

7h | Panorama
Kestopur’s residents have crafted fans for generations and provided it to Rajbari, Faridpur, Kustia, Madaripur, Dhaka and several other districts. Photo: Masum Billah

Talpakha: When novelty becomes necessity

11h | Panorama

More Videos from TBS

13 helpful tips to negotiate about job

13 helpful tips to negotiate about job

2h | TBS Career
Why did Messi turn away from Europe?

Why did Messi turn away from Europe?

2h | TBS SPORTS
Breaching the Kakhovka dam – who benefits?

Breaching the Kakhovka dam – who benefits?

7h | TBS World
The cost of rechargeable fan is increasing hourly due to heating and load shedding

The cost of rechargeable fan is increasing hourly due to heating and load shedding

9h | TBS Today

Most Read

1
bKash denied permission to pay $4.10 lakh for Argentina football partnership
Banking

bKash denied permission to pay $4.10 lakh for Argentina football partnership

2
Photo: Noor-A-Alam/TBS
Splash

The Night Dhaka did NOT vibe with Anuv Jain

3
Photo: TBS
Energy

2nd unit of Payra power plant to shut down over coal shortage

4
Country's first floating solar power plant connected to national grid
Energy

Country's first floating solar power plant connected to national grid

5
Photo: Screengrab from a video posted by a NSU student
Energy

'Will collapse any moment': NSU teachers, students raise concern after long power outage hit country's largest private uni

6
Photo: Salahuddin Ahmed Paulash/TBS
Energy

LPG price drops by Tk13.42 per kg

EMAIL US
[email protected]
FOLLOW US
WHATSAPP
+880 1847416158
The Business Standard
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
  • Comment Policy
Copyright © 2023
The Business Standard All rights reserved
Technical Partner: RSI Lab

Contact Us

The Business Standard

Main Office -4/A, Eskaton Garden, Dhaka- 1000

Phone: +8801847 416158 - 59

Send Opinion articles to - [email protected]

For advertisement- [email protected]