Chinese state media has dished out questions about Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and whether it could be lethal to the elderly. A government spokesman suggested that the coronavirus could have originated in a U.S. military laboratory.
As the ruling Communist Party is increasingly questioned about China’s vaccines and renewed criticism of its early COVID response, it strikes back by encouraging fringe theories that experts say could be harmful.
State media and officials are casting doubt on Western vaccines and the origin of the coronavirus in an apparent attempt to divert the attacks. Both issues are in the spotlight due to the ongoing deployment of vaccines worldwide and the recent arrival of a WHO team in Wuhan, China, to investigate the origin of the virus.
While fringe theories overseas may drop eyebrows, efforts are also focused on a more receptive domestic audience. The social media hashtag ‘American’s Ft. Detrick ‘, started by the Communist Youth League, was viewed at least 1.4 billion times last week after a State Department spokesman called for a WHO investigation into the Maryland Biological Weapons Laboratory.
FILE – In this file photo on January 20, 2021, Hua Chunying, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, speaks during the daily press briefing at the Foreign Ministry in Beijing. China is trying to question the effectiveness of Western vaccines and the origin of the coronavirus, as a team of scientists selected by the World Health Organization is in the city where the pandemic first broke out. (AP Photo / Liu Zheng, file)
“Its purpose is to shift the blame of wrongdoing by (the) Chinese government in the early days of the pandemic to US conspiracy,” Fang Shimin, a now-based American author, confessed to falsifying. and exposed other fraud in Chinese science. . “The tactic is quite successful because of the widespread anti-American sentiment in China.”
Yuan Zeng, a Chinese media expert at the University of Leeds in the UK, said the government’s stories were so widespread that even well-educated Chinese friends asked her if they were true.
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His doubts and the spread of conspiracy theories could increase health risks if governments try to dispel vaccine discomfort, she said: “It’s super, super dangerous.”
In the latest newsletter, state media called for an investigation into the deaths of 23 elderly people in Norway after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. An anchor at CGTN, the English station of the broadcaster CCTV, and the newspaper Global Times accused the Western media of ignoring the news.
FILE – In this file, on March 19, 2020, a biosafety protection package for the treatment of viral diseases will be hung in a Level 4 Biosafety Training Facility at the US Army Medical Research and Development Command in Fort Detrick, Frederick, MD, where scientists are working. to help develop solutions to prevent, detect and treat the coronavirus. China is trying to question the effectiveness of Western vaccines and the origin of the coronavirus, as a team of scientists selected by the World Health Organization is in the city where the pandemic first broke out. (AP Photo / Andrew Harnik, file)
Health experts say deaths unrelated to the vaccine are possible during mass vaccination campaigns, and a WTO panel has concluded that the vaccine did not play a ‘contributing role’ in the deaths in Norway.
The media coverage in the state follows a report by researchers in Brazil who found that the efficacy of a Chinese vaccine is lower than previously announced. Researchers initially said that Sinovac’s vaccine was 78% effective, but the scientists revised it to 50.4% after including mild symptomatic cases.
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Following the news in Brazil, researchers from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank supported by the government, reported an increase in Chinese media disinformation about vaccines.
Dozens of online articles on popular health and science blogs and elsewhere have extensively investigated questions about the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine, based on an op-ed published in the British Medical Journal this month that leaves questions about its clinical trial data arise.
“It’s very embarrassing” for the government, Fang said in an email. As a result, China is trying to raise doubts about the Pfizer vaccine to save the face and promote its vaccines, he said.
Senior Chinese government officials were not ashamed to express their concern about the mRNA vaccines developed by Western medicine companies. They use a newer technology than the more traditional approach of Chinese vaccines currently in use.
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In December, the director of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control, Gao Fu, said he could not rule out negative side effects of the mRNA vaccines. He noted that this is the first time it has been given to healthy people, “there are concerns about safety.”
The advent of the WTO mission has brought back persistent criticism that China has allowed the virus to spread worldwide by reacting too slowly in the beginning, even reprimanding doctors who try to warn the public. The visiting researchers will begin fieldwork this week after being released from a 14-day quarantine.
The Communist Party sees the WHO inquiry as a political risk because it draws attention to China’s response, said Jacob Wallis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
The party wants to ‘divert the attention of domestic and international audiences by distorting the narrative about where the responsibility for the emergence of COVID-19 lies,’ Wales said.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying set the ball rolling last week by requesting the U.S. military’s WHO investigation. The site was previously named by CGTN and other state-owned outlets.
“If America respects the truth, please open Ft. Detrick and disclose more information about the 200 or more bio-laboratories outside the U.S., and allow the WHO expert group to go to the U.S. to investigate the origin,” Hua said.
Her comments, made public by state media, have become one of the most popular topics on Sina Weibo.
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China is not the only government pointing fingers. Former President Donald Trump, who tried to divert the blame for the handling of the pandemic by his government, said last year that he had seen evidence that the virus came from a laboratory in Wuhan. Although the theory has not been definitively ruled out, many experts think it is unlikely.