Tech
Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine (Representative image)
Twitter was heavily involved in moderating and suppressing tweets related to the Covid-19 pandemic and a board member of Pfizer, a prominent manufacturer of mRNA based COVID vaccine, played a significant role in this effort, according to the latest edition of Twitter Files.
The Files, published on Tuesday by Alex Berenson, a vocal COVID-19 contrarian, reveal that Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the USFDA and a sitting board member of Pfizer, sent an email to Twitter's senior public policy manager, Todd O’Boyle, in August 2021, flagging a tweet written by former Trump administration official Dr Brett Giroir.
In the tweet, Giroir had written "It's now clear #COVID19 natural immunity is superior to #vaccine immunity, by ALOT. There's no scientific justification for #vax proof if a person had prior infection."
Gottlieb told O'Boyle that "this is the kind of stuff that's corrosive" and that "this tweet will end up going viral and driving news coverage."
According to Berenson, O'Boyle forwarded Gottlieb's email to Twitter's "Strategist Response" team, writing "Please see this report from the former FDA commissioner."
Giroir's tweet was later labeled as "misleading" and blocked from being liked or shared. A message was added to the tweet telling Twitter users "Learn why health officials recommend a vaccine for most people."
"Besides being former FDA commissioner, a CNBC contributor, and a prominent voice on Covid public policy, Gottlieb was a senior board member at Pfizer, which depended on mRNA jabs for almost half its $81 billion in sales in 2021. Pfizer paid Gottlieb $365,000 for his work that year," Berenson said.
In September 2021, Gottlieb flagged another tweet, this time from COVID-19 policy critic Justin Hart.
Hart is a lockdown and Covid vaccine skeptic with more than 100,000 Twitter followers.
Hart's tweet read "Sticks and stones may break my bones but a viral pathogen with a child mortality rate of ~0% has cost our children nearly three years of schooling."
Berenson suggests that Gottlieb may have had a vested interest in suppressing this tweet as the Pfizer vaccine was then set to be approved for children 5 to 11 years of age and this represented a massive market for the pharma giant if parents could be convinced that COVID-19 was a real threat to their children.
Gottlieb also targeted Berenson himself days before the Covid-19 contrarion was permanently suspended from Twitter.
In response to the latest Twitter Files, Gottlieb released a statement suggesting that the leaked emails did not tell the whole story, and that he had raised concerns with Twitter in the past regarding safety threats directed towards him and his family.
He also said that the selective disclosure of his private communications with Twitter "instigates more menacing dialogue, with potentially serious consequences."
The 13th installment of the Twitter Files is the latest in a series of mails, chats and documents that have been shared by prominent independent journalists, including Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Michael Shallenberger, Lee Fang and David Zweig.
Past Twitter Files have covered a wide range of topics, including the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election, the internal pressure to permanently ban former President Trump, efforts by the White House and government officials to suppress content, and the existence of shadow-banning of prominent conservatives.
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