France: a mysterious agency pays influencers to decaf the Pfizer vaccine

PARIS.- Several French social media sites said they were contacted by a communications agency who offered them money to spread negative publicity about the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer, a tactic that the Department of Health called dangerous and irresponsible.

Leo grasset, whose YouTube channel DirtyBiology has more than one million subscribers, said on his Twitter account @dirtybiology that he had been offered money to criticize the Pfizer vaccine. The young man revealed on Tuesday that he had been offered a lucrative and secretive contract in exchange for saying the Pfizer vaccine posed a deadly risk. and that regulatory agencies and the traditional press cover this alleged risk.

“I received a partnership proposal to criticize the Pfizer vaccine in a video. Big budget, a client who wants to remain anonymous (…) if you watch videos on this subject, know that it is a trap ”, he tweeted. He added that the agency which contacted him had provided an address in London which turned out to be false.

It is not known how many people received such requests, where they came from, or why they were referred to the Pfizer vaccine, the most administered in France, a country with a tradition of vaccine skepticism. So far, Pfizer has not immediately responded to a request for comment from Reuters.

One of the operators of the site “Et ça se dit Médecin” (“And those call themselves doctors”), who has around 30,000 followers on Twitter and 90,000 on Instagram, also told the TV channel RMC TV What they offered him money to discredit the Pfizer vaccine.

Grasset said the person who contacted him identified himself as Anton and claimed his agency had “a considerable budget” for an “information campaign” on “Covid-19 and the vaccines available to Europeans, in particular AstraZeneca and Pfizer “.

Specifically, Anton would have asked Grasset to make a video 45 seconds to a minute on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube declaring that “the death rate of the Pfizer vaccine is three times that of AstraZeneca” and questioning the European Union’s decision to use it.

“It is a monopoly and it harms public health,” said Anton, referring to the purchases of this vaccine by the EU. In a subsequent email, Anton declined to reveal who was funding the initiative, stating that “the client prefers to remain incognito.” Grasset shared the emails with The Associated Press.

A doctor in the south of France who has tens of thousands of followers said he was also contacted by the organizers of the smear campaign. He told the French channel BFM Television who offered you over 2,000 euros ($ 3,000) if you posted a 30 second video.

For its part, French Minister of Health, Olivier Verán, condemned the disinformation campaign. “I don’t know where it comes from, from France or from abroad”, said on Tuesday to the channel BFM Television. “It’s pathetic, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible and it doesn’t work.”

Reuters and AP agencies

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