How Amazon is Delivering Hope in the Fight Against COVID-19
I can get a big ol’ bottle of coyote urine shipped to me Thursday from Amazon. If I desperately need the urine faster, (and I do) I can pay a little extra and get it tomorrow. And yet depending on where I live, I can’t get a freaking COVID test.
Amazon isn’t just a delivery company – it’s a logistics company, and some people really need these tests, like, yesterday. (just ask the person coughing on line behind me at Stop and Shop.) So, why the crap can’t they be the ones delivering the COVID tests and vaccines?
Well, it turns out they are. Amazon is now selling FDA-approved COVID-19 tests. The DxTerity COVID-19 Saliva at-Home Collection Kits are available in a single pack that costs $110 or in a 10 pack for $1,000. Wal-Mart is also selling a similar kit, but it’s a bit more complicated than the straight-forward Amazon kit, in which you just spit in a tube… (I can’t wait to do that and feel like a damn doctor.)
Amazon is also stepping up to help distribute the vaccine. After President Biden was sworn in, Amazon pitched an offer to “leverage our operations, information technology, and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts.”
But here’s the catch: Amazon employs over 800,000 workers in the US, and Amazon would love for them to get that vaccine ASAP- and they want to broker a deal to have it distributed at their own facilities.
Not sure if Joe will take them up on their plan as is, but they already have started mobilizing on their own, helping to open up new pop-up clinics in Seattle. Amazon is even trying to make it easy to support those who have been affected by the pandemic.
They are working to stop price gouging from people who might be profiting off the pandemic, already suspending more than 3,900 seller accounts in the US store for violating fair pricing policies.
It feels pretty damn fair that they are helping out, given that Amazon has profited from the pandemic online shopping surge. Amazon’s profits roughly doubled to $21.3 billion, or $41.83 a share in the last year. So… yeah, keep up the good work and ship us some tests and vaccines please. (I’m a Prime member… so I can get it by tomorrow if I order within the next 1 hr and 21 min.)
