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The Pentagon is seen on August 27, 2023, in Washington
THE UNITED STATES ran online anti-vaccination campaigns at the height of the Covid pandemic to discredit China, a Reuters investigation has revealed.
The news agency’s probe focuses on the Philippines, where a Pentagon-directed operation from 2020-21 set up fake social media accounts which sowed doubt about the effectiveness of China’s Sinovac vaccine — at the time the only one available there — and other forms of life-saving aid from face masks to test kits.
It identified over 300 accounts matching descriptions shared with it by former US military officials, many deploying the hashtag #Chinaangvirus (“China is the virus” in Tagalog). These gained tens of thousands of followers.
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