White House Vows to Fight COVID Vaccine Propaganda

The White House said Monday it would fight Russia’s disinformation campaign targeting the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

"We will fight [disinformation] with every tool we have," said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki in a press briefing. "We will reiterate at every opportunity that these vaccines are safe, they've been approved by the FDA — we will have health and medical experts conveying that at every turn.”

Russia, Iran and China are engaged in subtle disinformation campaigns targeting the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), a nonpartisan initiative housed at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S.

“Pfizer received by far the most unfavorable coverage of any vaccine, particularly from Kremlin-funded outlets and Iranian state media and government accounts,” outstripping these foreign government-funded media’s coverage of the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines combined, says the report released Monday by Bret Schafer and co-authors for ASD.

The researchers found some differences in the three U.S. adversaries’ strategies, though. For example, “Russia was the most likely of the three studied countries to suggest linkages between the Pfizer vaccine and the subsequent deaths of vaccine recipients. Of the 209 tweets from Russian, Chinese and Iranian accounts that mentioned Pfizer and the words ‘die,’ ‘dead,’ or ‘death’ in the same tweet, 111 (53 percent) were from Russian state media outlets.”

While it was unclear why Pfizer was targeted, it may be because its vaccine was the first to be approved, it has the most brand recognition, and the rare adverse events associated with Pfizer’s vaccine may provide a convenient target, the report says.

Read the ASD report here: bit.ly/3kUmOjU. — Martin Berman-Gorvine