Russian Roulette by Any Other Means

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"There will always be a market for people who wouldn't necessarily have access to that medicine and wanted to protect themselves and their families."

"There will be, certainly globally, a lot of money that can be made by criminals."

Amy Shortman, pharmaceutical logistics expert, Overhaul, supply chain security

"We need to tell people at the vaccine centres that they carry gold."

"Criminals don't see a vaccine load, they see money."

Thorsten Neumann, head, Tapa, European arm supply chain security association

"Pharmaceutical manufacturers are already spending a lot of time to make sure their products and their supply chain is secure."

"I don't think there is any other industry on the globe that is as prepared for something like this."

Chuck Forsaith, head, Pharmaceutical Cargo Security Coalition, industry association

"We have seen very targeted (cyber) attacks related to the vaccine. The health sector is not very mature in terms of cyber-security", according to Evangelos Ouzounis, head of the secure infrastructure unit at Enisa, the EU Agency for Cyber-security. One opinion based on experience and the reality of the situation, the other quick to run to defence of the industry's capability of protecting their products from the grasp of a criminal element. So, which is it? where is the biased assurance and where the reality-based acknowledgement?

 

The most secure government and their agencies sites for whom a firewall of restricted entry has been relied upon for its assurances of being impervious to cyberattacks has most recently been stunned by the revelation that they have been infiltrated by ingenious, determined and malicious state actors and have been oblivious to the fact that high security data of all kinds have been siphoned away for the scrutiny of unauthorized actors putting the lie to their presumed attention to securing high-value data away from hostile eyes.

 

Yet where there is a market there will be painstaking efforts to satisfy the demands of that market, if not legally, then by illegal means in the great interests of profiteers. An expert points out the lapse in security within the health sector, yet even elite government agencies for whom secrecy is of the highest order have failed, spectacularly, to prevent infiltration through cyberleak safety. While those within society deemed at highest risk of succumbing to COV-19 are fast-tracked for vaccine relief, other sectors of society feeling equally at risk, will seek any means by which they too can be prioritized for inoculation, even if through their own resourcefulness.

 

And for many, in what they regard obviously as a life-or-death situation, compelled by a need to protect themselves and their loved ones, it is worthwhile to seek out any method even illegitimate and potentially harmful means, for the legitimate desire to arm themselves against a dread disease playing havoc in the global community of humanity. 

The dark web may seem like a sinister place to many, where traffic in the worst passions of a segment of sociopathic tendencies can be satisfied. But it is also a place of last resort for the desperate who will recklessly seek a source to supply them with forbidden elements of human gratification, from child porn to illicit recreational drugs and now to a new drug formula that will act as a vaccine against COVID-19. 

 

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Cybersecurity groups have tracked offers on the dark web for such vaccines in response to the anxiety of the public fearful of contracting the disease. Shipping costs and methods are suggested, with "stealth" delivery and special packaging. Vendors claiming their product is derived from known sources, safe and effective. Many of the vaccines purportedly for sale on the dark web, according to experts are fake to begin with, and the product, once paid for, may never be delivered.

The issue is also that people suffering from a high degree of anxiety over personal safety, hoping to avoid infection will go to any ends to acquire what they believe will help to save their lives. Without due consideration with respect to what exactly it is they're hoping to receive and achieve. There are no guarantees that the 'vaccine' they plan to use is either effective or safe for human use. It is also an unknown whether vendors have somehow gained access to authentic products.

What experts in the field do agree upon, however, is that these underground offers for the sale of purported COVID vaccines will proliferate the longer the world community has to wait for mass inoculation. Vaccine shortages, accidents in delivery and distribution, handling and storage will all add to the massive work involved in administering the vaccine to the general public once the initial vaccines have been utilized in inoculating the identified high-risk candidates.

In December, Interpol and Europol gave warning of a likely "onslaught" of criminal activity with links to COVID-19 vaccines, citing online fraud and cyber crime, to theft and the sale of fake or substandard doses. Illegally refilled empty vaccine vials could be offered by vendors whose object is to gain profit, not ensure that safe substances will be injected intra-muscularly in desperate people hoping to avoid COVID-19. This is a public health threat of significant proportions "ineffective at best, toxic at worst".

 

The arrival of coronavirus vaccines means people have started hawking so-called "vaccines" on the Dark Web. CHRIS JACKSON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images