The Twitter Files – How US Govt & Big Pharma Like Pfizer Suppressed Covid-19 Info Which Could Affect Their Profits

The Twitter Files – How US Govt & Big Pharma Like Pfizer Suppressed Covid-19 Info Which Could Affect Their Profits



Anew war has erupted on social media thanks to Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk. Pledging to fight for transparency at the microblogging site, the billionaire raised eyebrows last month when he wrote – “Twitter is both a social media company and a crime scene“. The big boss of Tesla and SpaceX subsequently showed a gravestone with a message “Twitter’s darkest secrets”.



And so begins the “Twitter Files”, where scandals or dark secrets are being exposed at the pleasure of the 51-year-old business tycoon. Ranging from how the social network blocked stories related to Hunter Biden’s laptop to help Joe Biden wins the 2020 US Presidential election to powerful pharmaceutical companies suppressing Covid information, the Twitter Files are more explosive than Ukraine War.



Musk’s latest project exposes collusion between tech companies, American politicians and the “deep state” to silence the public. People read for the first time unheard strategy like “shadow banning” – using algorithms to “de-amplify” tweets in order to stop tweets reaching a wider audience. Twitter Files also unveiled how the FBI regularly holds meetings with Twitter executives.



The revelation that Twitter has been working hand-in-glove with FBI to take action against so-called “misinformation” – even surrendering personal data of users – shows not only the unhealthy relationship between social media and state security, but also the suppression of freedom of speech which the U.S. has been lecturing authoritarian regimes like China.



As the public learns how Democrats received help from Twitter to win the war on social media against the conservatives, the most damaging exposure has been how both the Trump and Biden administrations suppress ideas or information on social media related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Essentially, only narratives in line with the official positions of the White House were allowed.



Releasing new files on how Twitter “rigged the Covid debate”, independent journalist David Zweig said – “Twitter censored information that was true but inconvenient to the U.S. government policy, discredited doctors and other experts who disagreed and suppressed ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s own data”.



In 2020, as the world was plagued with the pandemic, there was a campaign for an international partnership to share ideas and technology to quickly produce medicines to solve the crisis. However, global drug giants saw the crisis as an opportunity to make unprecedented profits. So, the pharmaceutical companies quietly launched massive attacks on the campaign.



For example, Nina Morschhaeuser, a lobbyist for Twitter in Europe, was contacted by German drugmaker BioNTech, along with the German government, about a “campaign targeting the pharmaceutical companies developing the Covid-19 vaccine”. The campaign was an international push to force the drug industry to share the intellectual property and patents associated with Covid vaccine development.



While the initiative would allow countries across the world to swiftly manufacture generic vaccines and other low-cost therapeutics to save lives, it would be disastrous to the revenue and profit of giant pharmaceutical corporations. Morschhaeuser lobbied Twitter to “hide” activist tweets based on an email from BioNTech spokesperson Jasmina Alatovic.



Su Fern Teo, a member of the Twitter’s safety team, said the activist campaign did not show any violation of the company’s terms of service. But BioNTech, which developed Pfizer’s vaccine, continued to pressure Twitter to censor users demanding for generic low cost vaccines. Ultimately, the campaign to share Covid vaccine recipes around the world failed.



In Nov 2022, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism finally revealed how pharmaceutical companies went to great lengths to cripple efforts to share pandemic-related patents and IP – including threats to the government of Belgium, Colombia, and Indonesia. An adviser to the Belgian prime minister said he received a lobbying phone call in 2021 which he said was a “direct threat”.



According to the adviser, Janssen Pharmaceutical, the Belgian-founded pharmaceutical arm of Johnson & Johnson that developed single-shot Covid-19 vaccine, warned that it will reconsider its billion-dollar research and development investments in Belgium if it supported a proposal hatched by India and South Africa at the World Trade Organization (WTO) for producing generic pandemic medicine.



India, the largest democracy in the world, was leading lower and middle income nations at the WTO to push for a suspension of vaccine patents to allow cheaper versions to be manufactured and sold to poorer countries. The country with 1.4 billion citizens, hit by deadly Covid waves that overwhelmed its hospitals in 2021, had proposed a waive patent protection only for the duration of the pandemic.




Despite support from more than 100 countries, mostly lower and middle income nations, as well as human rights organisations, vaccine experts and trade unions, wealthy nations refused to consider India’s plea. Indonesian government too was pressured by the giant drug manufacturers in 2020, threatening to slash investment in the country.



The rich and powerful pharmaceutical corporations like Pfizer-BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca paid millions to lobbyists to influence the Western governments to kill the proposal. Big Pharma, whose representatives have direct access to senior government officials, argued that a waiver would threaten investment and innovation.



Pfizer and BioNTech generated a staggering US$37 billion in revenue from its mRNA Covid vaccine in 2021 alone, making it one of the most lucrative drug products of all time. Moderna, which made US$17.7 billion from vaccine sales in 2021, recently announced its plan to hike the price of its Covid shot by about 400%. The high cost of vaccines also saw hoarding by the wealthy countries.



The greed of pharmaceutical also saw flagging of tweets that potentially affect the sale of their vaccines. For example, Dr. Brett Giroir, a paediatrician who served in the Trump administration, tweeted – “It’s now clear #COVID19 natural immunity is superior to #vaccine immunity, by ALOT. There’s no science justification for #vax proof if a person had prior infection.”



The tweet was noticed by Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member and former head of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), who then emailed Todd O’Boyle, a top lobbyist in Twitter’s Washington office. Dr. Giroir’s tweet, seen as damaging to pharmaceutical’s business, was labelled “misleading” and the like or share functionality was promptly disabled.



But the story didn’t end there. Reporter Alex Berenson, who shared a screenshot of Dr. Brett Giroir’s tweet, was stunned when his own Twitter account was suspended indefinitely. It was only after a lengthy court battle that the reporter was able to reclaim his account in July 2022. Berenson was targeted after he agreed that Gottlieb’s motivation for suppressing the tweet was financial.



The Big Pharma is so serious about protecting their interest that they actually have their own lobbying group – BIO – which has millions of dollars in funding. The lobby group wrote to the Biden administration, demanding the U.S. government to sanction any country attempting to violate patent rights and create generic low cost Covid medicine or vaccines.



It got so bad that opinions which did not support vaccination were targeted as if the U.S. was practicing autocracy instead of democracy. Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, had some of his posts labelled as misinformation and false information simply for disagreeing with CDC guidelines. As a result, likes and replies were disabled on his post.



Apparently, a reader had asked Kulldorff on Twitter whether everyone, including children, needed to be vaccinated against Covid-19. He replied – “No. Thinking everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed and thinking no one should. COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people, and their caretakers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.”



According to Matt Taibbi, one of a few independent journalists entrusted by Musk to access the classified files, Twitter has been paid over US$3 million by the US government to do the dirty jobs. But Twitter was not the only companies involved. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others were also roped in by the Trump and Biden administration to manipulate information.



The classified Twitter Files released by new CEO Elon Musk show that Western social media companies are not as independent as Western powers would want us to believe. It screams hypocrisy when they repetitively criticize China, Russia, and other countries regarding censorship and limitations on freedom of speech, but did exactly the same themselves – secretly.