Noah and the flood of Covid-19 profiteers
Swift retaliation hits the brothers who thought they could make money out of the coronavirus pandemic
As they criss-crossed the state of Tennessee, buying up every bottle of hand sanitiser they could find, were the Colvin brothers thinking "Après nous, le déluge" (after us, the flood)?After all, one of the brothers is called Noah, a name sodden with biblical nuance in these uncertain days.More likely, as Matt and Noah stashed the U-Haul trailer with cheap sanitiser, they were thinking not of Louis XV’s mistress Madame de Pompadour lamenting the imminent destruction of France, but only of the fat payday coming their way as they resold the hand sanitiser on Amazon at a markup which in some cases, the New York Times reports, topped $70. Per bottle.The "whiplash" — as one of the brothers called it — has been fierce. Amazon suspended their account, along with those of thousands of others gouging on the supply of face masks, hand wipes and sanitiser as Covid-19 stalks the US.The panic, most visible in bleeding stock markets and people fighting over toilet paper, is very human. Just like t...
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