COVID-19 vaccine producer Moderna was so desperate to ensure huge profits that it coordinated with Big Tech to try and censor free speech.
Independent journalist Lee Fang published a recent report detailing how Moderna worked to censor online voices with which it disagreed. The pharma giant and its partners reportedly targeted those on social media who criticized “mandates, industry profiteering, and the efficacy and safety of childhood vaccinations.” Fang also argued that the rise of the censorship industrial complex – censorship collusion between Big Tech, government officials, and private entities – is linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Though Moderna grew from a startup to a $100 billion giant with its COVID-19 vaccine, the company had a $3.6 billion loss in last year’s third quarter. Americans rejected a COVID booster shot, and Moderna decided “misinformation” was to blame, Fang explained, citing RealClearInvestigations. Moderna then coordinated with former public health officials and law enforcement, along with The Public Good Projects (PGP), on “shutting down misinformation.”
Moderna reportedly went so far as to provide talking points to 45,000 healthcare professionals and form the “Infodemic Training Program” to counter alleged misinformation. According to Fang, the pharma giant actually used artificial intelligence (AI) so it could monitor millions of online conversations. Its particular targets included actor Russell Brand, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), and independent journalists Michael Shellenberger and Alex Berenson.
Meanwhile, PGP, which received money from the lobby group that represents Moderna, coordinated the censorship of social media content, Fang wrote. PGP sent tech companies lists of accounts to amplify or censor. It even went after articles that it admitted did not contain misinformation, but which undermined trust in government agencies like the CDC.
“The Moderna Reports consistently show the company raising red flags about those reporting documented side effects of the vaccine the biotech company was selling,” Fang declared. “Like the Twitter Files, the Moderna Reports highlight the push by powerful entities – especially government, Big Tech, and Big Pharma – to identify and brand dissenting opinions about establishment narratives as risky forms of speech,” he added. Fang further noted that Moderna’s obsession with censorship could be tied to the fact that the company’s success has been almost solely dependent on the COVID-19 vaccines, which few Americans want to continue taking.
Moderna has not ceased its efforts, Fang wrote, as the company flagged one of Berenson’s tweets as late as September 2023. The Moderna Reports journalist also noted that the company monitored both Brand and his defenders even though the company did not identify any specific false information, but rather simply because Brand was a popular content creator with COVID-19 skeptics. Both Shellenberger and Paul, meanwhile, became targets of Moderna after highlighting reports that the CIA had suppressed information about COVID-19 and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the virus’s possible point of origin, Fang reported.
While it is not clear whether Moderna successfully censored these individuals and others, according to Fang, the Pharma giant remains determined to coordinate with social media and other private entities to suppress free speech.
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