Trump's attempt to buy a coronavirus vaccine shows why big pharma needs to change | Diarmaid McDonald

The president's shameless bid highlights the need for a drugs industry that prioritises the public interest over profit

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Pandemics don't destroy societies, but they do expose their weaknesses. As the historian of medicine Frank Snowden recently told the New Yorker: "Epidemic diseases are not random events that afflict societies capriciously and without warning " on the contrary, every society produces its own specific vulnerabilities."

Coronavirus has exposed the effects of successive budgetary cuts on the NHS, leaving the health service under-resourced and ill-equipped to cope with a pandemic. And like other pandemics before it, coronavirus will disproportionately take the lives of those who are most vulnerable: the elderly, the homeless, prisoners, migrants denied access to healthcare, and those with existing health conditions such as cancer and HIV.