France Hit By Mystery Campaign To Discredit Pfizer

Muhammad Irfan Published May 25, 2021 | 05:22 PM

French media and social networks were abuzz Tuesday with speculation about a mysterious offer to influencers and YouTube personalities asking them to publicly denigrate the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in return for money

Paris, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th May, 2021 ) :French media and social networks were abuzz Tuesday with speculation about a mysterious offer to influencers and YouTube personalities asking them to publicly denigrate the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in return for money.

Those targeted by the campaign, who are active in the health and science fields, said they had received an email from an apparently UK-based communications agency offering them "a partnership" on behalf of a client with "a colossal budget" but who wanted to remain anonymous and also to keep any deal secret.

"Strange. I've received a partnership proposal which consists of slamming the Pfizer vaccine in a video," tweeted Leo Grasset, whose popular science channel has nearly 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube.

"Colossal budget, client wants to remain incognito, and I'd have to hide the sponsorship." He added: "Incredible.

The address of the London agency that contacted me is fake. They never had a presence there, it's a laser surgery centre. All staff have weird LinkedIn profiles." The profiles he found had now disappeared, but not before he noticed that "everybody there has worked in Russia".

Sami Ouladitto, a comedian with nearly 400,000 subscribers, reported a similar approach, as did Et Ca Se Dit Medecin (And They Call Themselves Doctors), a hospital intern with 84,000 followers on Instagram.

"This is pathetic, it's dangerous, it's irresponsible and it's not going to work," French Health Minister Olivier Veran told the BFMTV channel on Tuesday.

French people are mostly in favour of getting vaccinated and "I don't think that any attempt to turn them away from vaccines will work," he said, adding he had "no idea" whether the supposed offer might have originated in Russia.