A few days ago, the news spread unnoticed to some with no reservations: the founder of Amazon added in a day 13 billion USD to his personal fortune, which makes him the wealthiest man on planet Earth, owning 189.3 billion USD.

The money earned in just 24 hours broke the record profit earned by a single man since 2012, when the Bloomberg Billionaires Index was created. The billionaire had stated in light of the event that he had just become “a little bit richer.”

It is not modesty, it is actually wantonness, impudence to humiliate and offend.

The thing is that this is not dirty, ill-gotten money, but “coincidentally” the owner of this US major multinational, Jeff Bezos, has lately increased his wealth from Covid-19, to the expenses of the world´s tragedy.

Online purchasing dramatically increased worldwide, triggered by social isolation and Amazon´s e-commerce, which provided a strong opportunity for them. In this regard, Amazon generated revenues of 11,000 USD per second.

A Spanish digital newspaper reported how face masks’ prices skyrocketed to 700% in February. Meanwhile hand sanitizers’ prices were 400% higher.

The 3M face mask, with 11.28 Euros price tag, increased to 89.95 Euros in February.

Among the comments posted by internet users on the giant e-commerce website, you can still read: “this face masks usually cost a few Euros. You have to be too much despicable to inflate prices at the expenses of coronavirus.”

But not only Amazon increased its wealth at the hands of this pandemic, Mark Zuckerberg — founder of Facebook— witnessed how his personal fortune grew 62% while Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla CEO —one of the five richest men on Earth— tripled his fortune.

It is so frustrating and unfair that few people profit from the lack of resources and angst of so many individuals due to the pandemic. In fact, the wealthiest families today hold a joint net worth of 250 billion USD more than they had treasured through all of last year.

While a small amount of money is paid at the expenses of other people´s tears, this 1% of the wealthiest families concentrate more wealth than 60% of the rest of mankind. The opposite side of the coin portrays a discouraging panorama: the total of undernourished individuals may go up to the 83-132 million people.

These UN forecasts take into consideration the social and economic blow on humans unleashed by this new Coronavirus.

8.9% of the world population are starving: 690 million people need food.

10% of the world population suffer from food insecurity. Today, 12.000 individuals may starve to death. And every single day so until the end of the year.

Nearly 2.2 billion people do not have access to drinking water. 3 billion people lack of proper sanitation facilities for basic handwashing. And according to the WHO, nearly 19.7 infants have not received any basic vaccination.

This is what is actually taking place in this mad world, where a bunch of people keeps earning more and more while the rest is starving and dying from others conditions. When are we going to develop a vaccine against this nightmare —similar, or perhaps worse than Covid-19?

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff