Last Updated on January 11, 2023
The latest entry in a slow drip of internal Twitter documents and internal communications detailed the company’s coordination with pharmaceutical companies — including Pfizer — in order to suppress information questioning the risk and efficiency of COVID-19 vaccines. Previous “Twitter Files” entries have detailed the social media giant’s coordination with the federal government aimed at suppressing information in the name of combatting “dis” and “misinformation.”
Alex Berenson, who was previously banned by Twitter for questioning COVID-19 responses and vaccination efforts, was the latest journalist to be granted access to the ongoing releases by new CEO Elon Musk.
In the latest drop, Berenson shared an August 2021 email sent from Pfizer board member and former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb to Twitter’s senior public policy manager Todd O’Boyle in which Gottlieb flagged a tweet written by former Trump administration official Dr. Brett Giroir.
“It’s now clear #COVID19 natural immunity is superior to #vaccine immunity, by ALOT. There’s no scientific justification for #vax proof if a person had prior infection,” wrote Giroir in the tweet flagged by the Pfizer board member.
“This is the kind of stuff that’s corrosive,” Gottlieb told O’Boyle. “Here he draws a sweeping conclusion off a single retrospective study in Israel that hasn’t been peer reviewed. But this tweet will end up going viral and driving news coverage.”
O’Boyle then forwarded that email to Twitter’s “Strategist Response” team, saying “Please see this report from the former FDA commissioner.”
Sure enough, the Trump official’s tweet was soon slapped with a “misleading” label while users were blocked from liking, retweeting or sharing the tweet. Users were also greeted by a message reading “Learn why health officials recommend a vaccine for most people.”
3/ Twitter put a misleading tag on the tweet, preventing it from being shared. Gottlieb then went after a tweet about Covid's low risk to kids from @justin_hart. Pfizer would soon win the okay for its mRNA shots for children, so keeping parents scared was crucial…
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) January 9, 2023
Gottlieb also flagged another tweet in September 2021 from independent reporter Justin Hart, which read “Sticks and stones may break my bones but a viral pathogen with a child mortality rate of ~0% has cost our children nearly three years of schooling.”
“Why Gottlieb objected to Hart’s words is not clear, but the Pfizer shot would soon be approved for children 5 to 11, representing another massive market for Pfizer, if parents could be convinced Covid was a real threat to their kids,” Berenson wrote.
In response to the latest drop, Gottlieb posted his own Twitter thread claiming that the messages do not show the whole story.
“In the past, I’ve raised concerns with Twitter related to the safety of me and others, and threats being made on the platform. This included direct as well as specific threats. Sometimes it included statements that I believed were purposely false and inflammatory,” Gottlieb wrote Monday. “The selective disclosure of my private communications with Twitter stokes the threat environment. So does actions that empower people who’ve shown little restraint when it comes to purposeful vitriol. It instigates more menacing dialogue, with potentially serious consequences.”