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Russell Brand wants you to know that the transnational global mega-companies creating vaccines for COVID-19 are the same drugmakers responsible for the opioid crisis that has killed more people than COVID.

In his latest video, Brand cites a Feb. 3 study in JAMA Psychiatry showing that from March 2020 to October 2020, opioid overdose cases were up by 29%, suggesting that society is now “more susceptible than ever to addiction.”

Judgments like the one against Johnson & Johnson, ordered by the state of Oklahoma to pay $572 million for “aggressively marketing” opioids, have had little impact on drugmakers for whom “profits override all other considerations,” Brand says.

Is it any wonder, Brand asks, that some people might question the motives of these same companies when it comes to their role in solving the pandemic?

“I suppose what we can learn from the opioid crisis is that a situation that was already bad, i.e. mental illness and addiction, was exacerbated by the agendas of certain transnational corporations, aided and abetted by an impotent FDA and a government unwilling to intervene in practices of big businesses. And I suppose it’s interesting that these very  same companies are now charged with solving the biggest problem the world has seen for some time in the form of a pandemic.

Brand then asks the $64,000 question:

“How can you use the same mentality, and the same individuals, and the same organizations to solve that problem?”

If there’s an answer to that question, Brand says, at least you can be sympathetic when people have doubts and fears, not just about the vaccines made by these companies, but about “the power of these organizations and the manner in which they practice.”

Watch the video: