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"I don't think it's defensible," an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth said of the clandestine effort.
A Reutersinvestigation published Friday revealed that the Pentagon ran a "clandestine operation" aimed at discrediting China's coronavirus vaccines and treatments, a campaign that U.S. public health experts and others condemned as a cynical ploy that endangered lives for political purposes.
According to Reuters, the Pentagon's secretive campaign was designed to counter what the U.S. "perceived as China's growing influence in the Philippines," a country that was ravaged by Covid-19. The virus, which killed millions of people globally, was first detected in Wuhan, China in late 2019.
The campaign reportedly began in the spring of 2020 and was terminated in the middle of 2021 after it had expanded beyond Southeast Asia to Central Asia and the Middle East. U.S. officials involved in the effort worked "to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other lifesaving aid that was being supplied by China" using "phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos," Reuters found.
"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," the news agency added. "Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus—Tagalog for China is the virus."
One tweet that Reuters described as "typical" exclaimed that "COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don't trust China!"
Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine who previously worked as a military physician, told Reuters that he was "extremely dismayed, disappointed and disillusioned to hear that the U.S. government would" conduct such an operation.
"I don't think it's defensible," Lucey added.
"We were literally ready to let people die to avoid giving China a PR win."
Others expressed outrage on social media. Justin Sandefur, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, called the Pentagon's campaign "truly shameful" and lamented that "we were literally ready to let people die to avoid giving China a PR win."
"That 'pork in the vaccine' nonsense you saw on Facebook was U.S. taxpayer-funded," Sandefur wrote.
Reuters reported that a "key part" of the Pentagon's strategy was to "amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China's shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law."
"Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China's vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day," the agency noted.
One senior U.S. military officer whom Reuters described as directly involved with the propaganda campaign in Southeast Asia told the outlet that "we didn't do a good job sharing vaccines with partners," so "what was left to us was to throw shade on China's." The U.S. and other rich countries repeatedly obstructed efforts to lift vaccine patents to more widely distribute coronavirus shots.
Pressed by Reuters, the Pentagon acknowledged that the U.S. military launched a propaganda effort attacking the efficacy of China's vaccine.
World Health Organization (WHO) guidance released in June 2022 stated that China's Sinovac vaccine is "safe and effective for all individuals aged 18 and above."
"A large phase 3 trial in Brazil showed that two doses, administered at an interval of 14 days, had an efficacy of 51% against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection, 100% against severe COVID-19, and 100% against hospitalization starting 14 days after receiving the second dose," the WHO said.
Reuters reported that some within the U.S. State Department objected to the Pentagon's effort to promote skepticism about China's vaccine, arguing that a "health crisis was the wrong time to instill fear or anger through a psychological operation."
"But in 2019, before Covid surfaced in full force, then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper signed a secret order that later paved the way for the launch of the U.S. military propaganda campaign," Reuters observed. "The order elevated the Pentagon's competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat, enabling commanders to sidestep the State Department when conducting psyops against those adversaries."
"The Pentagon spending bill passed by Congress that year also explicitly authorized the military to conduct clandestine influence operations against other countries, even 'outside of areas of active hostilities,'" the agency added.
With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic driving up national hunger--in addition to other health and financial impacts--one progressive weighed in Thursday on how the left should judge the presidency of soon-to-be-sworn-in Joe Biden by suggesting: "'How many people stop going hungry' is a good one."
So said Saikat Chakrabarti, president of progressive think tank New Consensus, in an interview with Politico Magazine. There are, he noted, "50 million people at risk of going hungry this winter. So that should be cause enough to try to solve the problem."
"Honestly, if Biden is able to keep his own campaign promises--if he's able to actually create millions of high-wage jobs, get us out of a depression and the pandemic--that'll be pretty good. And I think it will show in 2022," said the Justice Democrats co-founder and former chief of staff for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
"If he's able to make a real difference in people's lives, and get people in places like Janesville, Wisconsin, from making $12 an hour back to making $40 or $50 an hour," Chakrabarti posited, "people will vote for him and for Democrats because they'll know that we actually did something with the power we were gifted."
\u201cFor decades, nobody was harder on Joe Biden than the political left.\n\nThen something unexpected happened: In one swoop, Biden became president and the left gained a significant foothold in Congress. And suddenly, to progressives, he doesn\u2019t look so bad\nhttps://t.co/YjRTA07iEc\u201d— POLITICO (@POLITICO) 1607652070
Chakrabarti's interview covered his optimism about potential progressives policy gains even if a pair of January runoff races in Georgia enable Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to stay in power and try to block Biden's agenda, as well as his thoughts on "the current state of the left" and what's changed over the past two years.
In 2018, seven Justice Democrats--three incumbents and the four young, progressive women of color collectively called the Squad--won seats in Congress. This year, Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) not only all held onto their seats, but they were joined by Jamaal Bowman of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri, and Marie Newman in Illinois.
"The people who've become leaders of the left in U.S. politics, they're in real seats of power now. The Justice Democrats have 10 members in Congress," he said. "Now they can negotiate as mature partners at a table. They have real power. That's a healthy place to be, and I think it's a really good place to be, especially if they're able to productively create change for the vast majority of Americans over the next two years--not just wins for the left, but everybody."
\u201cThis is an absurdly inflammatory & frustrating headline from @politico, but actually a really great interview w/@saikatc that is worth your time.\n\nDon\u2019t have to agree w/it all, but hard to argue America wouldn\u2019t be better off w/more of his way of thinking.\nhttps://t.co/2iFGTIg0Lv\u201d— Evan Weber \ud83c\udf05\ud83d\udd25 (@Evan Weber \ud83c\udf05\ud83d\udd25) 1607705067
As for Biden, last month Chakrabarti's New Consensus released a memo detailing how, with or without the Senate, the next president can tackle "the task of rebuilding and renewing our republic, its supply chains and productive capacities, and its social fabric--what you have aptly called 'the Soul of our Republic.'"
"After decades of unremitting deindustrialization and infrastructural degradation , along with the social unraveling that such decline always brings," the memo tells Biden, "our nation is in need of a thorough public health and industrial-infrastructural reconstruction--what you've called a 'Building Back Better .'"
The president-elect, Chakrabarti told Politico, "can essentially do what both Barack Obama and George W. Bush did with the Fed in 2008 during the recession, when the federal government--the executive branch, the Treasury--worked with the Fed to basically create a financing scheme of creating liquidity and low-interest, long-term loans to bail out Wall Street banks in a crisis."
"Biden should do that exact same thing with the Fed," he said, "but instead of loans to bail out banks, create long-term investments and loans into American industry and into jobs to do exactly what Biden just campaigned on: build electric-car manufacturing plants, build clean-steel plants, build solar panel factories, build all these means of creating jobs in every community all across America."
"And also, use our Federal Reserve bank to provide low-interest financing to small businesses," he added. "This is a way to give them the money they need to survive past this pandemic and rebuild the economy in a way that roars."
\u201cI wrote about how Biden can lead a multi-trillion dollar rebuilding project for America, building the industries of the future and creating high-wage jobs in every congressional district in the country--even without Dem control of the Senate. \n\nhttps://t.co/JIB2USVgix\u201d— Saikat Chakrabarti (@Saikat Chakrabarti) 1606238981
Outlining the memo at The Nation, Chakrabarti noted: "This may sound unusual to some, but would in fact be returning the Fed to its original mission as a network of regional development banks. This is how we spur the next generation of start-ups in everything from electric vehicles to artificial intelligence, creating millions of high-wage jobs, just as Biden has envisioned in his plan to 'Build Back Better.' Further, since this money is provided in the form of low-interest loans to businesses, as the economy recovers and businesses prosper, the Fed will make its money back--with interest."
"By providing the Fed with an actual plan for making money directly available to Main Street instead of just Wall Street," he added, "Biden can have not just a faster recovery, he can also show the American people within his first two years that he is fighting with every tool at his disposal to create a booming, high-wage, and more sustainable economy that is building the industries of the future. Will Biden lead the charge?"
Public health experts on Tuesday evening into Wednesday raised alarm over reports that the White House has embraced a declaration calling for a "herd immunity" approach to managing the coronavirus pandemic, put forward by scientists whose views have been denounced as "fringe" by National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins.
"This is a fringe component of epidemiology. This is not mainstream science. It's dangerous. It fits into the political views of certain parts of our confused political establishment."
--Dr. Francis Collins, National Institutes of Health
Reporters spoke on Monday with an anonymous senior administration official about the "Great Barrington Declaration," a document unveiled on Oct. 4 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts at the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian think tank.
The declaration promotes a strategy called "Focused Protection"--what one professor at the University of New South Wales called a rebranding of "herd immunity," in which Covid-19 would be permitted to spread through the young and relatively healthy population while the elderly and people with pre-existing health conditions would follow public health guidance to prevent them from contracting the disease. The document calls for a return to schools, workplaces, and normal pre-pandemic routines as a means of allowing the virus to spread at "natural" rates.
\u201c"Herd Immunity" now rebranded "focused prevention" but still the same Social Darwinism underneath. As in this excellent @washingtonpost article: "Critics of Focused Protection say the idea is impractical, unethical and potentially deadly. There is no way, they say, to segregate\u201d— Bill Bowtell AO (@Bill Bowtell AO) 1602624362
Three epidemiologists in particular--Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University, Sunetra Gupta of University of Oxford, and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford Medical School--were signatories of the document and have been mentioned by name in recent press briefings by Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist and senior fellow at the right-wing Hoover Institution who has become one of President Donald Trump's top coronavirus advisers in recent months despite his lack of public health expertise.
The scientists met with Atlas and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar last week, according to the Washington Post.
The senior administration official told the Post that the Great Barrington Declaration--which proponents claim has been signed by thousands of doctors and scientists but whose signatories include "transparently fake" names including "Dr. Johnny Bananas" and "Dr. Person Fakename," according toSky News--simply promotes the approach pushed by Trump for months.
The president began harshly criticizing lockdown measures almost as soon as they began in March and has pushed for a full reopening of schools and businesses while he and other Republicans have scoffed at the notion of providing robust, long-term economic aid to people and small businesses as other wealthy countries did months ago.
By forcing much of the population to return to their normal routines amid the pandemic, adherence to the Great Barrington Declaration would keep the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate from having to consider how to provide aid to businesses that are forced to close and people who have to stay at home to avoid spreading the coronavirus.
Rather than ignoring public health guidance, tweeted Yale epidemiologist and public health activist Gregg Gonsalves, the federal government must focus on making it economically viable for families and small businesses to keep their communities safe.
\u201cIn many places in the US we have widespread community transmission happening. We need to get these levels down now. This means a massive voluntary commitment to doing this together to protect our neighbors, friends and families. 5/\u201d— Gregg Gonsalves (@Gregg Gonsalves) 1602535579
\u201cIn many places in the US we have widespread community transmission happening. We need to get these levels down now. This means a massive voluntary commitment to doing this together to protect our neighbors, friends and families. 5/\u201d— Gregg Gonsalves (@Gregg Gonsalves) 1602535579
\u201cWe did this in the spring, BUT too many people were left behind. The social and economic support that should have been forthcoming from the federal government in the US got shoveled to big corporations. 6/\u201d— Gregg Gonsalves (@Gregg Gonsalves) 1602535579
The declaration does not include any mention of members of the public wearing face coverings or adhering to social distancing guidelines, nor does it outline how specifically society would segregate elderly and medically vulnerable people from young and relatively healthy people who are urged to go about their regular routines.
Collins told the Post that the document will likely be embraced as "an idea that someone can wrap themselves in as a justification for skipping wearing masks or social distancing and just doing whatever they damn well please."
"What I worry about with this is it's being presented as if it's a major alternative view that's held by large numbers of experts in the scientific community. That is not true," Collins told the Post. "This is a fringe component of epidemiology. This is not mainstream science. It's dangerous. It fits into the political views of certain parts of our confused political establishment."
Other public health experts on social media, both in the United Kingdom and the U.S., expressed alarm over the White House's decision to embrace the proposal.
\u201cWe need a new approach that says what do families, small businesses need to stay safe? Main Street not Wall Street has to be the focus. And we need to fight for it otherwise the pigs, the big shots at the trough keep eating at our expense. 7/\u201d— Gregg Gonsalves (@Gregg Gonsalves) 1602535579
\u201cThe "focused protection" idea:\n\n*ignores Long Covid\n*ignores the massive mental health effects of shielding\n*is ableist,ageist+racist\n*won't work because everyone's interlinked\n*relies on immunity we don't yet know exists\n\nMedia, pls stop giving these fringe scientists airtime.\u201d— Georgia Ladbury \ud83c\udf6b\u2615 (@Georgia Ladbury \ud83c\udf6b\u2615) 1602364754
\u201cHerd immunity is not a public health strategy.\n\nPeriod.\u201d— Don S. Dizon MD (he/him) \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\uddfa (@Don S. Dizon MD (he/him) \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\uddfa) 1602670622
\u201cTreating herd immunity as an option is ridiculous because it violates principles of biomedical ethics. \n\nCould we REALLY tolerate 1.2 million deaths in a short period of time; MILLIONS more with unknown complications? \n\nhttps://t.co/XUuxzornZ6\u201d— (((Howard Forman))) (sarcasm/parody) (@(((Howard Forman))) (sarcasm/parody)) 1602633266
\u201cThe White House is reportedly embracing a herd-immunity approach focused on \u201cprotecting the elderly and the vulnerable\u201d just a few weeks after it failed to protect a 74-year-old with multiple comorbidities.\n\nhttps://t.co/E57n4PzS3T\u201d— Craig Spencer MD MPH (@Craig Spencer MD MPH) 1602644834
Gonsalves called into question the primary idea being put forth by the Great Barrington Declaration--that public health experts are calling for a "full-scale" lockdown in which people would be unable to leave their homes for long periods of time.
\u201cSo, no one likes lockdowns. No one thinks that they are without secondary harms. And most importantly, NO ONE is arguing for Wuhan-style full-scale lockdowns. No one is. But a straw man argument is being set up by those who want to mislead the American and British publics. 1/\u201d— Gregg Gonsalves (@Gregg Gonsalves) 1602535579
\u201cWhat are public health experts really promoting? Testing, tracing, isolation, targeted screening, universal mask wearing, massive social/economic support for ordinary Americans (and Britons). If closures need to happen they can be targeted, focused,. 3/\u201d— Gregg Gonsalves (@Gregg Gonsalves) 1602535579
"We need a vaccine to get to herd immunity without putting millions of lives in jeopardy," Gonsalves tweeted. "Full stop. Stop the bullshit."