During the pandemic, the United States armed forces, under the leadership of the Pentagon, allegedly launched a discredit campaign against Sinovac (equivalent to Coronavac in Brazil), a Covid vaccine produced by the Chinese, according to an investigation by the news agency Reuters.
The target of anti-vaccine propaganda was Filipino citizens. The motivation would be retaliation against the eastern dictatorship for blaming Washington for the pandemic.
The peak of the operation was in mid-2020, the year in which the most lethal variants of SARS-CoV-2 circulated.
American intelligence allegedly created at least 300 fake accounts on social network X (at the time, Twitter), posing as Filipinos. Profiles used the tag (hashtag) #Chinaangvirus, “China is the virus” in the Tagalog language.
The fake account “Layla” (@layla12721217), for example, posted on July 29, 2020: “Covid came from China and vaccines came from China.” Accompanying the message was a montage with the face of then-president Rodrigo Duterte with a fake speech in which he promised more islands in exchange for having his country prioritized in the delivery of doses. Another account said “from China came personal protective equipment, masks, vaccines: everything fake. But the coronavirus is real.”
A true statement from Duterte a year later, in a televised speech, was “you choose: either you get vaccinated, or I arrest you. There is a crisis in the country, I am disappointed in Filipinos who do not listen to the government.”
OX removed the accounts after Reuters begin their investigation, stating that they were robots part of a coordinated campaign, based on activity patterns and internal data from the social network.
The agency believes that the campaign lasted about a year, ending in mid-2021, thus involving the governments of Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Other countries in Central Asia and the Middle East would have been targets of similar Pentagon campaigns. For Muslim audiences, the message was that the Chinese shots contained pork gelatin, thereby allegedly violating Islamic law’s prohibition on the consumption of pork.
When the program was closed by the Biden administration, an investigation was reportedly opened. The Pentagon’s propaganda operation did not target American citizens.
American intelligence has already carried out similar campaigns in information warfare involving vaccines. In its hunt for terrorist Osama Bin Laden, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) implemented a false hepatitis vaccination program in Pakistan. The operation was unmasked in 2014, leading to a 23-year prison sentence for Pakistani surgeon Shakil Afridi.
A polio vaccination campaign in the country ended up suffering by association. The CIA was collecting DNA from possible relatives of bin Laden. At the time, the Obama administration promised that the CIA would no longer use false vaccination campaigns and promised not to exploit anyone’s genetic material acquired in this type of operation.
In the Philippines, it’s unclear how much of an impact the Pentagon’s anti-vaccine campaign has had. Filipinos are already suspicious of China due to disputes between the two countries over maritime territory. An already present distrust was used by the Americans.
Coronavac, the target of the campaign, proved to be less effective in protecting against infections. However, it was also less reactogenic (less prone to adverse events and post-inoculation discomfort) than alternatives produced in the United States with new mRNA nanoparticle technology.
#Pentagon #launched #antivaccine #campaign #retaliation #China