Former Head of the FDA Turned Pfizer Director Scott Gottlieb (How Convenient) Pressured Twitter to Deplatform Anyone Claiming, Accurately, That Natural Immunity Was Stronger Than That Provided by Pfizer's Leaky Non-Vaccine

Former government official now working with what is essentially a government partner corporation is telling government-tolerated monopolies who to censor.

On August 27, 2021, Dr. Scott Gottlieb -- a Pfizer director with over 550,000 Twitter followers -- saw a tweet he didn't like, a tweet that might hurt sales of Pfizer's mRNA vaccines.

The tweet explained correctly that natural immunity after Covid infection was superior to vaccine protection. It called on the White House to "follow the science" and exempt people with natural immunity from upcoming vaccine mandates.

It came not from an "anti-vaxxer" like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but from Dr. Brett Giroir, a physician who had briefly followed Gottlieb as the head of the Food & Drug Administration. Further, the tweet actually encouraged people who did not have natural immunity to "Get vaccinated!"

No matter.

By suggesting some people might not need Covid vaccinations, the tweet could raise questions about the shots. Besides being former FDA commissioner, a CNBC contributor, and a prominent voice on Covid public policy, Gottlieb was a senior board member at Pfizer, which depended on mRNA jabs for almost half its $81 billion in sales in 2021. Pfizer paid Gottlieb $365,000 for his work that year.

Gottlieb stepped in, emailing Todd O'Boyle, a top lobbyist in Twitter's Washington office who was also Twitter's point of contact with the White House.

The post was "corrosive," Gottlieb wrote. He worried it would "end up going viral and driving news coverage."

...

Through Jira, an internal system Twitter used for managing complaints, O'Boyle forwarded Gottlieb's email to the Twitter "Strategic Response" team. That group was responsible for handling concerns from the company's most important employees and users.

"Please see this report from the former FDA commissioner," O'Boyle wrote - failing to mention that Gottlieb was a Pfizer board member with a financial interest in pushing mRNA shots.

A Strategic Response analyst quickly found the tweet did not violate any of the company's misinformation rules.

Yet Twitter wound up flagging Giroir's tweet anyway, putting a misleading tag on it and preventing almost anyone from seeing it. It remains tagged even though several large studies have confirmed the truth of Giroir's words.

Gottlieb wasn't done protecting Pfizer's market share, though:

A week later, on Sept. 3, 2021, Gottlieb tried to strike again, complaining to O'Boyle about a tweet from Justin Hart. Hart is a lockdown and Covid vaccine skeptic with more than 100,000 Twitter followers.

"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," Hart had written.

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.

Gottlieb also pressured Twitter to censor Alex Berenson. Berenson received proof of that as part of his lawsuit against Twitter and the Biden Administration.

Gottlieb could not deny he frequently wrote to Twitter demanding they censor people interfering with Pfizer's market potential.

So he lied about the reasons for doing so:

But in an interview with Joe Kernan of CNBC, Gottlieb said he had asked Twitter to act only because he was concerned if tweets raised the threat of violence against vaccine advocates.

Relatedly: Here's something that would get you deplatformed for mentioning. Vitamin D provides you significant protection against covid. I'm not sure I trust that study -- it also claims that mask-wearing reduces risk, as does cigarette smoking (!) and marijuana smoking. I

Meanwhile, the Republican AGs's lawsuit against the Biden Administration has disclosed proof that Biden's top officials, and maybe Biden himself, was responsible for pressuring social media monopolies to censor Tucker Carlson.

[O]n April 14, 2021, Rob Flaherty, then director of digital strategy for the White House, wrote to a Facebook official (and copied Flaherty) complaining about a Tucker Carlson video discussing the risk of blood clots with the J&J COVID vaccine (you can read the emails for yourself below). "Since we've been on the phone--the top post about vaccines today is Tucker Carlson saying they don't work. Yesterday was Tomi Lehren saying she won't' take one," he said. "This is exactly why I want to know what 'Reduction' [of posts from the vaccine hesitant] actually looks like--if 'reduction' means 'pumping our most vaccine hesitant audience with tucker [sic] Carlson saying it doesn't work' then...I'm not sure it's reduction!"

The Facebook official replied, "Running this down now."

Slavitt jumped into the email thread: "Number one on Facebook. Sigh. Big reveal call with FB and WH today. No progress since we spoke. Sigh."

Apparently, Facebook didn't respond quickly enough to the White House's demands, so Flaherty shot back three hours later, "These questions weren't rhetorical."

In other words: We demand action. We're not just engaging in discourse.

The Facebook official countered that Tucker's wasn't actually the most popular piece of content on the platform, citing vaccine-related posts from the New York Times, CNN, the CDC, and others, and explained that the post had been demoted, slapped with a "pointer to authoritative COVID information," and is "not being recommended to people."

"Regardless of popularity," he added, "the Tucker Carlson video does not qualify for removal under our policies."

He explained that following the government's decision the day before to put a "pause" on the J&J vaccine, "We are allowing claims that the Johnson and Johnson vaccine causes blood clots, but we still do not allow categorical claims that it or other vaccines are unsafe or ineffective."

Seemingly frustrated with the decision not to remove the video, Flaherty emailed again at 11:20 p.m. that night: "I guess this is a good example of your rules in practice then--and a chance to dive in on questions as they're applied."

"How was [Tucker's video] not violative?" Flaherty demanded. "The second half of the segment is raising conspiracy theories about the government hiding that all vaccines aren't effective. It's not just about J&J. What exactly is the rule for removal vs. demoting? What does that mean? There's 40,000 shares on the video. Who is seeing it now? How many? How effective is that?"

"Not for nothing," he added in a cryptic message from his iPhone, "but the last time we did this dance, it ended in an insurrection." In other words, Flaherty blamed Facebook's policies for the Jan. 6th Capitol riot.

David French maintains that none of this is censorship, and all of this is just how the First Amendment is supposed to work.

Don't ask him if Big Tech is paying him. He won't tell you. In fact, he'll tell you he has a First Amendment right to keep that confidential.

posted by Ace at 03:23 PM

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