{"id":57653,"date":"2021-03-25T08:44:58","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T12:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=57653"},"modified":"2021-03-25T15:49:53","modified_gmt":"2021-03-25T19:49:53","slug":"despite-so-much-outright-msm-misrepresentation-gates-and-fauci-do-have-direct-connections-with-moderna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=57653","title":{"rendered":"Despite so much outright MSM misrepresentation, Gates and Fauci do have direct connections with Moderna<\/b>!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, Fauci and Gates Do Have Ties to COVID-19 Vaccine Maker<\/strong><\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"

Bill Gates with NIH Director Francis Collins and NIAID Director Anthony Fauci at the NIH in June 2017<\/strong> (Photo by NIH, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0)<\/p><\/div>\n

by Jeremy R. Hammond<\/p>\n

O<\/span>n September 11,\u00a0USA Today<\/em>\u00a0published an article with a headline declaring, \u201cFact check: Fauci, Gates, Epstein and Soros have no ties to drug company Moderna<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

But that headline was\u00a0false<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Both Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and member of the White House coronavirus task force, and Bill Gates\u00a0do\u00a0<\/em>have ties to Moderna, a pharmaceutical company developing a COVID-19 vaccine using mRNA technology.<\/p>\n

The article does rightly identify misinformation presented in a video widely shared on social media.<\/p>\n

With respect to Fauci,\u00a0USA Today<\/em>\u00a0notes that the video\u2019s claim that Fauci was the first CEO of Moderna is false. Nevertheless, Fauci does have ties to Moderna.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the article notes that the video\u2019s claim that Fauci and Gates were college roommates is false. But Gates, too, nevertheless does have direct ties to Moderna.<\/p>\n

In fact,\u00a0USA Today\u00a0<\/em>contradicts its own headline by acknowledging that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation \u201cis listed as one of Moderna\u2019s collaborators\u201d on\u00a0the company\u2019s page<\/a>\u00a0at the investor website Flagship Pioneering.<\/p>\n

The closest connection\u00a0USA Today\u00a0<\/em>acknowledges with Fauci is his having been \u201ca co-reviewer of a vaccine platform Moderna is working to improve\u201d, as indicated by a\u00a02019 Shareholder Letter<\/a>. This refers to a review of vaccine technologies Fauci coauthored that was published last year in the journal\u00a0Nature Reviews Immunology<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Although\u00a0USA Today\u00a0<\/em>doesn\u2019t mention it, the same letter, under the subheading \u201cPartnerships\u201d, mentions having $187 million in funding from grants, with a footnote reference. The footnote specifies that the grants are from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA),\u00a0and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation<\/em>.<\/p>\n

BARDA<\/a>\u00a0operates under the Department of Health and Human Services.\u00a0DARPA<\/a>\u00a0is a research and development agency of the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n

That both Fauci and Gates have close ties to Moderna is no secret. Having encountered the headline in a news feed, I knew it was false and so did a quick Google search to document its falsity. It took about ten seconds to fact check\u00a0USA Today<\/em>\u2019s \u201cFact Check\u201d.<\/p>\n

My search immediately turned up a page published in March on the website of the NIAID, which operates under the National Institutes of Health (NIH),\u00a0announcing<\/a>\u00a0the beginning of a phase one clinical trial for Moderna\u2019s COVID-19 vaccine. The webpage notes that Fauci\u2019s NIAID is \u201cfunding the trial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Moderna\u2019s candidate vaccine \u201cwas developed by NIAID scientists and their collaborators\u201d at Moderna.<\/p>\n

The page quotes Fauci saying that the trial was \u201can important step\u201d toward developing \u201ca safe and effective vaccine to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2\u201d.<\/p>\n

Similarly, I was able to immediately pull up a page from Moderna\u2019s website\u00a0listing<\/a>\u00a0the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as a \u201cstrategic collaborator\u201d, with the foundation having \u201centered a global health project framework agreement\u201d in January 2016 \u201cto advance mRNA-based development projects for various infectious disases.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The original USA Today headline falsely claimed that Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates have \u201cno ties\u201d to COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer Moderna<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I emailed the author and the corrections editor on September 13 to request that they correct their false headline and acknowledge the NIAID\u2019s partnership with Moderna, in accordance with\u00a0USA Today\u2019s code of ethics<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

I also pointed out that, even if they were unaware of that partnership, since the collaboration between the Gates Foundation and Moderna is acknowledged in the article, they\u00a0knew\u00a0<\/em>that their headline was false. I also noted the hypocrisy of fact checking others while\u00a0willfully\u00a0<\/em>misinforming the public themselves.<\/p>\n

Two days later, I received a reply from the author, Chelsey Cox, thanking me for my comments but sticking to the headline with the reasoning that \u201cThe headline reflects the analysis of the claim subject to fact-checking.\u201d<\/p>\n

I replied, \u201cIt does not follow that since the claims about Fauci and Gates subject to fact-checking are false that therefore they have \u2018no ties\u2019 to Moderna. That is a\u00a0non sequitur\u00a0<\/em>fallacy. Indeed, you point out yourself in the article that Gates does have ties to Moderna, his foundation being partnered with the company. The headline is false and should, by\u00a0USA Today\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0own ethical guidelines, be corrected.\u201d<\/p>\n

She responded later that day to let me know that she\u2019d gotten an editor\u2019s approval to change the headline, which now reads, \u201cFact check: Moderna post makes false claims about Fauci, Gates, Soros, Epstein<\/a>\u201d. (That\u2019s also not a great title since it makes it sounds as though Moderna itself was spreading the misinformation, but at least the false claim about Fauci and Gates having \u201cno ties\u201d to Moderna was removed.)<\/p>\n

USA Today\u00a0<\/em>did not publish an acknowledgement of the error and did not update the article to acknowledge that Fauci, like Gates, is partnered with Moderna in the development of its COVID-19 vaccine.<\/p>\n

\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The USA Today\/Gannett Building in McLean, Virginia (Photo by\u00a0Patrickneil<\/a>, licensed under\u00a0CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Who Will Fact-Check the Mainstream Media?<\/h2>\n

The spread of misinformation is a serious problem in our society today. But the mainstream narrative is that it\u2019s coming from individuals on social media or alternative media websites. The reality is that the greatest purveyors of misinformation are the government and mainstream media.<\/p>\n

Notice that the mainstream media\u2019s self-proclaimed \u201cfact checkers\u201d don\u2019t fact check each other despite endless opportunities to do so. Instead, they focus on \u201cdebunking\u201d information from alternative sources.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The use of the term \u201cfake news\u201d is illustrative. The corporate media accuse alternative sources of propagating \u201cfake news\u201d\u00a0to maintain their own dominance as purveyors of misinformation<\/a>, such as\u00a0the unevidenced conspiracy theory<\/a>\u00a0propagated\u00a0by the\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that the Russian government hacked the US election infrastructure in 2016.<\/p>\n

To illustrate, a\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>editorial published in November 2019 pointed out that oppressive regimes had been using the term to dismiss criticisms over human rights violations, then blamed this phenomenon on Donald Trump for having repeatedly referred to mainstream media sources as propagating \u201cfake news\u201d. It was Trump, they alleged, who gave rise to \u201cthe epithet of \u2018fake news\u2019 as a weapon\u201d.<\/p>\n

But that was a blatant lie. In fact, it was the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>and other mainstream media\u00a0who had weaponized the term \u201cfake news\u201d<\/a>\u00a0by attacking online independent journalism that threatens both the business model of the major corporate media and the political agendas those corporations tend to align themselves with.<\/p>\n

In this case, mainstream media\u2019s political agenda was to manufacture consent\u00a0for the censorship of information from alternative media sources on social media<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When Donald Trump started using the term \u201cfake news\u201d, he was\u00a0mockingly\u00a0<\/em>throwing their own label back at them to emphasize their hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

That episode was in keeping with\u00a0the function of the media<\/a>\u00a0outlined by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their seminal treatise\u00a0Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So-called \u201cfact check\u201d articles frequently fulfil this function by misinforming the public.<\/p>\n

For example, a\u00a0Lead Stories\u00a0<\/em>\u201cfact check\u201d cited by Facebook to flag a post about the infection fatality rate of SARS-CoV-2 as false was itself guilty of lying,\u00a0falsely\u00a0<\/a><\/em>claiming that it was a frightening 1.3\u00a0percent<\/a>\u00a0when that figure was not even an estimate of the infection fatality rate.<\/p>\n

For another example, the website\u00a0FactCheck.org has\u00a0falsely\u00a0<\/em>claimed\u00a0<\/a>that the mercury used in flu shots, and formerly in numerous other vaccines on the CDC\u2019s routine childhood schedule, is harmless and that science has proven that vaccines don\u2019t cause autism. The website\u2019s source for these assertions was the CDC\u2019s website and a 2004 review by the Institute of Medicine (IOM). The CDC in turn also cites several observational studies and the IOM review. Yet the IOM in fact acknowledged that the mercury-based preservative thimerosol is a \u201cknown neurotoxin\u201d that \u201caccumulates in the brain\u201d and \u201ccan injure the nervous system\u201d.<\/p>\n

The IOM also\u00a0acknowledged<\/a>\u00a0that the hypothesis that vaccines can contribute to the development of autism in susceptible children cannot be excluded by observational studies and, moreover,\u00a0that none of the studies included in their review were actually designed to test that hypothesis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Censorship of\u00a0truthful\u00a0<\/em>information is a growing problem.<\/p>\n

In February 2019, Congressman Adam B. Schiff\u00a0sent letters<\/a>\u00a0to the CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Amazon, essentially calling on these companies to help the government\u00a0censor any information<\/a>\u00a0about vaccines that wasn\u2019t in line with the goals of public vaccine policy.<\/p>\n

Ostensibly, the purpose was to combat \u201cmisinformation\u201d about vaccines, but his criteria applied\u00a0only\u00a0<\/em>to what he termed \u201canti-vaccine\u201d information and were inclusive of\u00a0any\u00a0<\/em>information, no matter truthful and well-grounded in science, that might lead parents to \u201cdecline to follow the recommended vaccination schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schiff himself blatantly lied about vaccine safety in the letter by asserting that there is \u201cno evidence to suggest that vaccines cause life-threatening or disabling diseases\u201d.<\/p>\n

In keeping with that perceived duty, Facebook has, for example,\u00a0flagged\u00a0a post saying that\u00a0vaccines can cause encephalopathy<\/a>\u00a0as \u201cFalse\u201d, citing a \u201cfact check\u201d article by\u00a0Health Feedback<\/em>. (Encephalopathy encompasses any type of brain damage, disorder or disease, including encephalitis, or brain inflammation.)<\/p>\n

Yet the vaccine manufacturer Merck in its bestselling medical textbook the\u00a0Merck Manual<\/em>\u00a0states explicitly that \u201cEncephalitis can occur as a secondary immunologic complication of certain viral infections or vaccinations.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the US government, under its Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which along with legal immunity for vaccine manufacturers serves to shift the financial burden for injuries away from the pharmaceutical companies and onto the taxpaying consumers, lists encephalopathy and encephalitis as compensable vaccine injuries.<\/p>\n

In a famous case, a girl named Hannah Poling developmentally regressed into diagnosed autism after receiving nine vaccine doses at once at 19\u00a0months of age. The government acknowledged the vaccinations \u201csignificantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another Facebook \u201cFact Check\u201d cites an AFP article and a\u00a0Lead Stories<\/em>\u00a0article to\u00a0flag a video\u00a0as false for reporting that\u00a0the World Health Organization\u2019s chief scientist had been caught lying<\/a>\u00a0to the public about vaccine safety. Both \u201cFact Check\u201d articles denied that the WHO chief scientist had lied.<\/p>\n

Yet neither of those articles bothered to explain how the report was untrue when the scientist\u00a0had\u00a0<\/em>in fact claimed in a WHO video published on YouTube that \u201crobust vaccine safety systems\u201d exist in countries around the globe that enable scientists working closely with the WHO to ensure that vaccines are administered \u201cwithout risks\u201d\u00a0only to admit a few days later<\/em>\u00a0to her colleagues in a WHO meeting that \u201cwe cannot overemphasize the fact that we really don\u2019t have very good safety monitoring systems in many countries\u201d and that the risk of serious adverse events being discovered only after a vaccine is on the market is \u201calways there\u201d.<\/p>\n

The push for\u00a0censorship of inconvenient truths has gotten so bad<\/a>\u00a0that a study in the journal\u00a0Vaccine\u00a0<\/em>has equated even messages that simply emphasize that\u00a0we have a right to informed consent<\/em>\u00a0with vaccine \u201cmisinformation\u201d.<\/p>\n

That study was widely cited by the media as having shown that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.\u2019s organization\u00a0Children\u2019s Health Defense<\/a>\u00a0was the top spreader of vaccine \u201cmisinformation\u201d via Facebook ads even though it didn\u2019t produce even a single example of such an ad.<\/p>\n

Ironically, the study\u00a0did\u00a0<\/em>produce an example of a \u201cpro-vaccine\u201d ad that the authors had no problem with even though it\u00a0falsely\u00a0<\/em>communicated that science had proven that the HPV vaccine prevents cervical cancer when, in truth, as noted in January in a study published in the\u00a0Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine<\/em>, none of the clinical trials used by the manufacturers to obtain licensure were designed to determine the vaccine\u2019s effectiveness against cervical cancer, and whether the vaccine prevents cancer remains unknown.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Bill<\/p>\n

Bill Gates with NIH Director Francis Collins and NIAID Director Anthony Fauci at the NIH in June 2017 (Photo by\u00a0NIH<\/a>, licensed under\u00a0CC BY-NC 2.0<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s Up to\u00a0Us\u00a0<\/em>to Hold the Media Accountable<\/h2>\n

The problem of censorship and mainstream misinformation is a serious one with frightening implications. Just as mainstream misinformation manufactured consent for the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, so is it being used today to manufacture consent for extreme and harmful \u201clockdown\u201d measures in response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and for vaccine mandates.<\/p>\n

Together, these political agendas pushed by the mainstream media raise the threat that any COVID-19 vaccine that goes through\u00a0the FDA\u2019s vaccine approval process<\/a>\u00a0to get to market will be\u00a0mandated<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We must fight against that authoritarian agenda.<\/p>\n

There are a number of things you can do to help fight this threat.<\/p>\n

First,\u00a0don\u2019t spread misinformation<\/em>\u00a0on social media. Think critically, question your own assumptions, and check your confirmation bias. Take the time to try to verify information to make sure it checks out. We do\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>want to be\u00a0legitimizing\u00a0<\/em>accusations of spreading misinformation because it plays right into the hands of those who wish to censor our voices.<\/p>\n

Second,\u00a0do\u00a0<\/em>keep spreading\u00a0truthful\u00a0<\/em>information that the establishment wants to keep from the public. Social media is a very useful tool for circumventing the gatekeepers and challenging mainstream propaganda narratives. That\u2019s precisely why people like Congressman Adam Schiff want social media platforms like Facebook to censor information on behalf of the government. When you read quality articles containing important and verifiable information that mainstream media consumers just aren\u2019t otherwise getting, be sure to\u00a0share\u00a0<\/em>it.<\/p>\n

Third, when you encounter media content that is misinforming the public, make an effort to hold them accountable. Write to the authors and editors to respectfully request corrections to false information, providing them with any documentation necessary to prove that their claims are untrue. (I thank my own readers for identifying errors in my own writings on occasion, which I correct with published acknowledgments.)<\/p>\n

Fourth, when you encounter mainstream misinformation, hold it up as an example to educate others about how they are being deceived and how the media tend to serve the function of manufacturing consent for harmful government policies. Share the information and explain to your friends, family, and followers on social media why the claim or narrative is false and what the truth is.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to be an independent journalist to take a stand and take action against the threats posed by mainstream misinformation and propaganda narratives. We\u00a0all\u00a0<\/em>have an important role to play in seeking\u00a0truth\u00a0<\/em>and spreading it for the betterment of humanity.<\/p>\n

You may find yourself personally attacked for speaking out. But with knowledge comes the confidence to face the bullies who will call you names and attack your character rather than substantively addressing your legitimate argument.<\/p>\n

You may also find yourself censored. Facebook has penalized my page, for example, for sharing a few pieces of content it\u00a0falsely\u00a0<\/em>flagged as misinformative while itself spreading misinformation through its supposed \u201cfact check\u201d articles.<\/p>\n

For another example, on a local newspaper\u2019s post quoting Michigan\u2019s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, encouraging people to get a flu shot, I commented by stating findings from studies that didn\u2019t align with that policy goal and sharing links to those studies in the medical literature; and\u00a0the newspaper responded by deleting my comments and banning me<\/a>\u00a0from their page. So, I fought back by encouraging my readers to confront them\u00a0for censoring science<\/em>\u00a0to push flu shots, and they ultimately resorted to\u00a0censoring themselves\u00a0<\/em>and deleting their post to prevent their audience from learning\u00a0the truth<\/em>\u00a0about both the science and their cowardly and intellectually dishonest censorship.<\/p>\n

There is an information war on. We must all do our part to educate ourselves and share empowering knowledge with others. We must also hold media institutions accountable to a higher standard. Our future depends on it.<\/p>\n

___
\nhttps:\/\/www.jeremyrhammond.com\/2020\/09\/16\/fauci-gates-moderna\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, Fauci and Gates Do Have Ties to COVID-19 Vaccine Maker<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}