Wellness gurus exploited the Covid knowledge vacuum as a first-mover advantage

Evidence

It was inside that vacuum that so many wellness hustlers saw a first-mover advantage. … Sure, they didn’t understand the virus either, but for plenty in this unregulated sector, that had never stopped them from making inflated claims about what a particular herb or diet will do before. … And so, unlike the epidemiologists who were busy trying to understand SARS-CoV-2, many wellness gurus wasted no time pitching all manner of supplements, tinctures, and miracle cures that all claimed to do what the doctors could not: protect us. … It was a bonanza—until, of course, the vaccines showed up and threatened to spoil all the fun. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 605

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘first-mover advantage’ framing of the wellness sector reads like a direct inversion of Schumpeterian/market-process logic applied to snake oil — mirrors the reputation/first-mover dynamics from the Milgrom law-merchant material.
• SEED: Essay angle: the vaccine as the moment the wellness grift met its market enemy — a public good that undercuts private protection-selling, and how every grift needs a villain who ‘spoils the fun.’