“We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective,” said a senior military officer involved in the program. “We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”
But to what end in this case? Impede their pharma industry? It doesn’t even make sense. It’s so childish and spiteful.
They wanted to impede the soft power of China in the region. It does make sense in a realpolitik kind of way, but someone with a fucking conscience in the command chain should have stopped this.
someone with a fucking conscience in the command chain should have stopped this.
Based on the article it sounds like many on the US side did strongly oppose this, which is slightly reassuring. I’m going to tell myself the goons that went ahead with this were MAGA.
Considering that SinoVac was approved for use June 1st, 2021 and Biden was inaugurated January 20th, 2021…
The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found.
Well that’s just fucking shameful.
It’s no great secret that the Trump administration was peddling in vaccine misinformation.
The only surprise here is how much damage it caused in the Philippines in particular.
The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found.
???
Not saying I’m super impressed with the bidden admnistration, but "started it with an explicit goal of spreading misinformation and “took them a couple months to put a stop to it” are not the same thing. Your statement sounds like it’s trying to draw that false equivillency.
This is incredibly fucked up. Aside from the immorality of this they do realise that viruses don’t give a shit about national borders right? That’s kind of why we had, you know, the whole fucking pandemic.
Especially against a friendly country with a lot of back and forth migration.
Assuming you’re talking about China I think friendly is a bit of a stretch and migration is largely one way. That said the overall point still stands, at the very least the US is pretty dependent on them.
