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US troops have been using fake social media accounts to spread propaganda to discredit Chinese COVID-19 vaccines in the Philippines at the height of the pandemic, a shocking US military report has said. The anti-vaccination campaign ran from spring 2020 to mid-2021, with the title ” [the Pentagon] “This is perceived as a sign of China’s expanding influence in the Philippines,” the magazine concluded in its investigation. The Philippines has a low vaccination rate even in 2021, several months after China’s Sinovac vaccine arrived in the region, and the number of COVID-19 deaths reached nearly 50,000 by November of that year.
Examples of anti-vaccination messaging in the US include: ReutersIn 2020, one account tweeted, “COVID came from China, the vaccine comes from China. Don’t trust China!” The campaign also promoted the claim that Chinese vaccines are “haram” (forbidden under Islamic law) because they contain ingredients derived from pigs.
Former military personnel Reuters He said the Defense Department had propaganda accounts on X, Facebook and Instagram, and that Facebook executives had identified the accounts and warned them that they were violating the platform’s policies in late 2020. But some of those accounts were not ultimately removed, even after the Defense Department said it would stop using them in its anti-vaccine campaigns. Reuters During our investigation, we found at least 300 accounts that appeared to be involved in this operation and notified X. These accounts were determined to be bots and have been removed.
according to ReutersThe campaign was launched after the Chinese government made unsubstantiated claims that the spread of COVID-19 could be traced back to the U.S. In a statement to the publication, a Pentagon spokesperson referred to China’s disinformation campaign and said the military is “using a range of platforms, including social media, to counter malicious influence attacks targeting the United States, our allies, and partners.”