PEUs Behind COVID-19 Manhattan Project

WSJ reported:

A dozen of America’s top scientists and a collection of billionaires and industry titans say they have the answer to the coronavirus pandemic, and they found a backdoor to deliver their plan to the White House.

These scientists and their backers describe their work as a lockdown-era Manhattan Project, a nod to the World War II group of scientists who helped develop the atomic bomb. This time around, the scientists are marshaling brains and money to distill unorthodox ideas gleaned from around the globe.

The group includes numerous private equity underwriters (PEU).

Steve Pagliuca - Bain Capital
Jim Palotta -- Raptor Fund
Brian Sheth-  Vista Equity Partners
Peter Thiel - Founders Fund
Tom Cahill - Newpath Partners
Micheal Milken -- The Milken Institure

Consider Vista Equity Partners' roots:

Vista Equity Partners, for instance, has made billions by buying up mid-level software corporations in niche industries (like Yoga studio software) and raising prices on the small businesses that depend on it.

Vista Equity Partners had this statement on their website regarding COVID-19:

Across our portfolio, Vista companies are leveraging their technology and relationships to mitigate immediate challenges and anticipate and help solve tomorrow’s problems today. To this end, many of our companies are acting quickly to build solutions and offer free services, new applications and resources that address the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic and social crises.

President Trump pardoned Junk Bond King Michael Milken during his lost February.  Rather than prepare the country for a looming pandemic Trump was cheerleading Milken's clean criminal record.  Milken is the father of leveraged buyouts which got rebranded as private equity after his fraud conviction and jail sentence.

Private equity is one of the more important social forces across the West, a style of business that has been structuring our politics and our commerce since it was super-charged by men like Michael Milken and William Simon in the early 1980s.

The PEU led COVID-19 group produced a seventeen page document intended to be a blueprint for a national response.

The greed and leverage boys pulled out the stops to lobby the government for access to trillions in COVID-19 funding.   CNBC reported:

Some of the world’s largest investment firms combined to spend at least $3 million lobbying members of the Trump administration and lawmakers on a bill that was meant to give relief to those that have taken a financial hit due to the coronavirus. 

PEU boys have also served on the shadow COVID-19 task force headed by Jared Kushner.

Science, not greed, should determine our future course. 

Update 5-4-20:  When he's not saving the world from the coronavirus Peter Thiel is trying to help fellow billionaires move their private equity/hedge fund stakes.  

Update 4-19-22:  A Russian oligarch put Chelsea FC up for sale and one bidder is U.S. oligarch Bain Capital's Steve Pagliuca.  Carlyle's David Rubenstein may team up and bid for the Washington Nationals MLB team.