Pfizer Board Member Pressured Twitter to Censor Posts on Natural Immunity, Low COVID Risk to Children

A Pfizer board member who used to head the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lobbied Twitter to take action against a post accurately pointing out that natural immunity is superior to COVID-19 vaccination, according to an email released on Jan. 9.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb wrote on Aug. 27, 2021, to Twitter executive Todd O’Boyle to request Twitter take action against a post from Dr. Brett Giroir, another former FDA commissioner.

“This is the kind of stuff that’s corrosive. 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,” Gottlieb wrote.

Giroir had written that it was clear natural immunity, or post-infection immunity, “is superior to vaccine immunity, by ALOT.” He said there was no scientific justification to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination if a person had natural immunity. “If no previous infection? Get vaccinated!” he also wrote.

Giroir pointed to what was at the time a preprint study from Israeli researchers that found, after analyzing health records, that natural immunity provided better protection than vaccination. The study was later published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases following peer review.

Researchers said the data “demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.” BNT162b2 is the trade name for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, which is the main shot used in Israel.

Gottlieb’s email triggered messages on Jira, Twitter’s internal messaging system, according to journalist Alex Berenson, who was granted access to Twitter’s internal files by CEO Elon Musk.

“Please see this report from the former FDA commissioner,” O’Boyle wrote.

A Twitter analyst who reviewed the post determined it did not violate any misinformation rules but Twitter still put a tag on it, claiming to all users who viewed it that it was “misleading” and directing them to a link that would show “why health officials recommend a vaccine for most people.” The tag prevented people from replying to, sharing, or liking Giroir’s post.

Gottlieb later defended his actions, saying he targeted posts that he thought included “false and inflammatory” information. Giroir said “my tweet was accurate then, and it remains so now” and that Twitter never responded to him.

Another Message

Gottlieb later messaged O’Boyle again, flagging a post from Justin Hart, a critic of lockdowns and a skeptic of COVID-19 vaccines, Berenson reported.

Gottlieb took issue with Hart writing that “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.”

COVID-19 poses little mortality risk to young, healthy people, studies and data show.

Gottlieb did not detail why he wanted to censor Hart, but the objection came shortly before the U.S. government authorized and recommended Pfizer’s vaccine for children aged 5 to 11.

O’Boyle sent the request to Twitter analysts, failing for a second time to disclose Gottlieb’s ties to Pfizer. The complaint did not trigger any action.

“Our team of ragtag analysts, activists, moms and dads have been going after Scott since April 2020 when he repeatedly advocated for school closures and lockdowns. He doesn’t like people pushing back on the narrative,” Hart told The Epoch Times in a Twitter message.

Twitter did not respond to requests for comment.

Tried to Get Journalist Banned

Gottlieb also tried to get Berenson, a former New York Times reporter who now authors a Substack, banned from Twitter, a message released in 2022 showed.

The message showed that Gottlieb forwarded a blog post from Berenson to a Twitter worker, writing that Berenson calling Dr. Anthony Fauci arrogant was an example of why Fauci, at the time the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, needed a security detail.

Four days later, and a day after Gottlieb met with Twitter workers, Twitter banned Berenson for allegedly violating its rules on COVID-19 misinformation.

Gottlieb defended his actions.

“I’ve raised concerns around social media broadly,” Gottlieb said during an appearance on CNBC. “And I’ve done it around the threats that are being made on these platforms, and the inability of these platforms to police direct threats, physical threats about people, that’s my concerns around social media, and what’s going on in that ecosystem.”

“I am very concerned with physical threats being made against people’s safety and the people who gin up those threats against individuals,” he also said.

Berenson responded that he’d never threatened Fauci or Gottlieb and referred to Gottlieb’s comments.

In the post that triggered Gottlieb’s email, Berenson criticized Fauci for saying that “attacks on me are attacks on science” and how he handled the U.S. pandemic response.

Berenson was reinstated to Twitter in 2022 as part of a settlement of a lawsuit he brought against the company. Berenson obtained Gottlieb’s email about Fauci’s post during discovery. Before the settlement agreement, a judge had concluded that Berenson plausibly alleged Twitter failed to abide by a policy of five strikes before banning the journalist.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/pfizer-board-member-pressured-twitter-to-censor-posts-on-natural-immunity-low-covid-risk-to-children-emails_4972280.html

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Covidians And Their Paper-Thin Skins

In the pre-Musk Twitter days, pencil-necked leftist overlords would simply censor dissidents for daring to cite inconvenient facts. That’s because they don’t like to be challenged or even politely questioned openly. They know their dumb ideas can’t stand up to scrutiny, so instead of rethinking and revising those dumb ideas they look for ways to ‘win’ the debate by silencing the opposition.

Now, since silencing the opposition - on Twitter at least - is a bit more difficult, many leftists have developed a particularly silly habit of simply blocking en masse anyone who disagrees with them. This is especially true of the Covidian Left, whose notoriously thin skin makes Donald Trump’s notoriously thin skin seem like rhinoceros hide.

If you want an example of this, simply go to a random Covidian’s 2,476th post about how everyone should “mask up” to avoid the literal plague and post a reply countering that view with data and/or maybe even a slight bit of mockery. If that reply gains any traction at all - and sometimes even if it doesn’t - you’ll be blocked faster than you can say “Fauci ouchie,” never again granted the privilege of seeing that Covidian’s wise and virtuous tweets (without a burner account anyway).

I’ve found this out the hard way more times than I can count, probably because I have a hard time abiding stupidity and I just can’t leave well enough alone. The pro-mask stuff is particularly loathsome. It was bad enough in 2020, but spouting the same nonsense in 2023 has about the same scientific credibility as a bird-beak-wearing plague doctor from the Middle Ages who want to treat what ails you with bloodletting and a fine tonic of arsenic and mercury. These morons just won’t let it go, and countering their nonsense has become a civic duty at this point. Which triggers THEIR ‘civic duty,’ which is to immediately block me.

Cases in point: In response to a Covidian posting a picture of her negative test and absurdly declaring party guests would have to do the same along with eating with the windows open and wearing masks between bites, I helpfully wrote, “I’d hate for someone to get a sniffle. Can’t be too careful.” Blocked. In response to a Covidian telling us how she managed to avoid Covid until she couldn’t avoid it any longer, I empathetically wrote, “My instinct is to make fun of you but what I feel is sadness for you. Imagine living this way for years to avoid a cold. It’s unsustainable, as you’ve found out, and even if it ‘worked,’ you’ve now wrecked your immune system. How could all that be worth it?” Again, blocked. In response to a Covidian asking those still masking to “raise their hand,” I simply pointed out that it was “an IQ test” that they “failed miserably.” Predictably, blocked. Heck, I’ve even been blocked by Taylor Lorenz and to my recollection, I’ve never once engaged with her feed.

Enter “Dr.” Lucky Tran, a leftist “science communicator” at Columbia University who is an ardent member of the masking cult. I thought I had bucked the trend with this guy when he followed me even after a particularly snarky response to one of his calls for not just masking, but a return to mask mandates. Just trying to be helped out of a genuine concern for this clown’s state of mind, I replied, “Masks and mask mandates would make zero difference regarding transmission. Zero. You are in a cult. Seek help.”

After that, Tran followed me. I then followed him back, because I’m always open to dialogue and debate with those who disagree with me. Shortly after, another Tran post caught my eye:

“A leftist told me their excuse for not masking was that shaming individuals were not a good way to build solidarity,” he wrote. “You know what breaks solidarity? Locking the most vulnerable out of society because you won’t do the bare minimum.” To which I replied, “Your or anyone else’s health is not my responsibility. If the vulnerable think masks work, they are welcome to wear as many masks as they like, or even a respirator or hazmat suit. Nobody is stopping them.”

What happened after that? You guessed it, insta-block. I’m thinking Tran had meant to block me on the previous post but accidentally clicked ‘follow’ instead. Fine. He has a full right to do so. But it just bolsters my point that conservatives welcome debate while leftists stifle it to protect their obnoxious, untenable positions.

My timeline on Twitter includes plenty of people posting to disagree, call me names, and even make fun of my receding hairline (that cuts deep, Shrek!). Unless they are an obvious bot - and by obvious bot I mean some glamour shot with 0 followers whose profile says to contact her for a great time - I don’t block them. When I have time, I occasionally even engage them in the discussion, because that’s what Twitter is supposed to be about. The fact that virtually none of these people do the same tells you everything you need to know.

https://townhall.com/columnists/scottmorefield/2023/01/09/covidians-and-their-paper-thin-skins-n2618028

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH) Also here

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH) Also here

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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