COVID-19
Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during COVID-19
The US military ran a clandestine campaign in the Philippines and the Middle East during the pandemic to discredit China’s Sinovac vaccine, according to an investigative report by Reuters.
The campaign aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China.
“Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation,” reported Reuters.
Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, created by the US military. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020.
In the Middle East and Central Asia “the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day”.
“A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because sometimes vaccines contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be forbidden under Islamic law.”
By June 2021 the Philippines had the worst vaccination rates in Southeast Asia, COVID cases exceeded 1.3 million and almost 24,000 Filipinos had died from the virus.
US health experts described the revelations as “the worst- case scenario for global public health”.
“The United States Government made a conscious decision to spread information that killed people,” Timothy Caulfield, a University of Alberta public policy expert told Scientific American.
Read more: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during COVID-19