A new investigative study by Reuters has shown how the Pentagon of the United States Department of Defense surreptitiously carried out an anti-vaccine campaign to discredit the Sinovac vaccine, which was developed in China, in what could be considered a struggle for market control.
According to the study, the campaign was deliberately implemented in the Philippines during the peak of the epidemic that struck the world in 2020 and 2021, killing thousands of people and crippling the world economy.
internal report
The study, which was made public on Friday, disclosed that American officials had planned a covert operation during the previous president Donald Trump’s administration. The battle against Sinovac continued for several months into Joe Biden, Mr. Trump’s successor,’s presidency.
The campaign’s goals, according to the study, were to undermine China’s growing power in Asia and the rest of the globe while casting doubt on the safety and effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine. Simultaneously, the US government began secretly vaccinating its people.
These bot accounts allegedly used the hashtag “Chinaangvirus”—which means “China is the virus” in Tagalog—to post a few alleged complaints about the quality of face masks, test kits, and China’s Sinovac vaccine.
A typical post from July 2020 purportedly said in Tagalog, “Don’t trust China! COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China.” The statements were allegedly put next to a picture of a syringe, a Chinese flag, and an ascending infection chart.
“From China PPE, Face Mask, Vaccine: FAKE,” says another post. However, the coronavirus is genuine. Don’t trust China—both the COVID and the VACCINE originated in China.
Tens of thousands of people followed the phoney accounts used by the US military during the experiment, according to a Reuters report.
Reuters was unable to ascertain the degree of COVID deaths that may have resulted from the anti-vax literature and other falsehoods that the Pentagon planned, nor how widely they were read.
Retaliation against China?
The paper added that China’s efforts to disseminate misleading information regarding the origins of COVID-19 prompted the Pentagon to launch its anti-vax propaganda.
The Chinese government stated in March 2020 that, despite the virus having first surfaced in the country in late 2019, it might have been introduced by an American service man who had taken part in an international military sports competition in Wuhan the year before.
According to Reuters, there was no proof to back up Chinese officials’ claims that the virus might have started in a US Army research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
A US Justice Department complaint claims that Chinese intelligence agents created networks of fictitious social media profiles to further the Fort Detrick plot.
Washington was alerted to China’s messaging. After Beijing claimed that the US military had transferred COVID to Wuhan, Trump came up with the name “China virus.”
That was untrue. And instead of fighting, I said, ‘I have to call it where it came from,'” stated President Trump during a press conference in March 2020. “It originated in China,” the study stated.
According to a Reuters investigation, the US anti-vaccine effort spread to central Asia and the Middle East in addition to the Philippines.
Posts opposing vaccinations in certain places asserted that Islamic tradition forbade the Sinovac shots because they may contain pork gelatin.
The operation started in the latter year of the Trump administration, but it carried on for several months after Joe Biden became president.
X answers the question
X deleted the personas after “determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data,” the article claims, after being contacted by Reuters over the accounts.
False information about vaccines
The study contains no indication that Nigeria was the focus of the US anti-Sinovac campaign. If it worked at all, it was ineffective. Sinovac was one of the first vaccines available in Nigeria. Nigeria received 470,000 doses of the vaccine from the Chinese government in 2021.
About three months before to the United States’ supply of 3.5 million Pfizer vaccines to Nigeria, China made its donation. According to PREMIUM TIMES, China’s vaccination was also administered earlier than the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine doses from the UK to Nigeria.
At the time, the Chinese issued a warning against spreading false information, politicizing COVID-19-related matters, and assigning blame for the outbreak to China.
“COVID-19 is a disease. We must work together. To defeat COVID-19, we must work together.”
In Nigeria, during the epidemic, there were a number of unfounded allegations made against vaccination, including the notion that it results in infertility or other chronic health issues.
Conspiracy theories added to the mistrust, claiming the vaccination was a tool for population control or included dangerous materials.
This false material was spread widely on social media sites like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter, frequently by using dubious sources or deceptive videos—including ones featuring well-known politicians.
In Nigeria, COVID-19
According to PREMIUM TIMES, on February 27, 2020, Nigeria announced its first COVID-19 case that was confirmed. It has several infections by the middle of 2021, with noticeable increases in instances.
More than 3,000 coronavirus-related deaths and 258,934 illnesses had been reported in Nigeria as of July 2022.
