Fact Checkers Caught Looking the Other Way (Again!) As Pfizer Nabbed Spreading Vaccine Misinformation and “Bringing Discredit” on the Entire Industry

Pfizer's COVID vaccine corruption adds further evidence that fact checkers are the pharmaceutical industry’s partners in crime.

6 minute read

A UK pharmaceutical body has accused Pfizer of “bringing discredit” on their entire industry  after Pfizer’s senior executives promoted the COVID vaccine on social media before it had even been licensed, breaching the regulatory code five times by making misleading claims, ignoring industry standards, and marketing unlicensed medicines.

This is the sixth time the body has reprimanded Pfizer over COVID-19 vaccine promotion, a list that includes an incident in late 2021, when Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was found to have given misleading statements about children’s vaccines during a BBC interview. That same year, CNN Business named Bourla “CEO of the Year,” and his estimated worth is now over $35 million. 

Last week’s ruling against Pfizer by the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) further emphasizes the breadth of Pfizer’s lies about their COVID vaccine. PMCPA found that Pfizer began violating industry standards in 2020 to promote their COVID vaccine, meaning Pfizer was misleading the public about their vaccine throughout the pandemic, even before announcing preliminary results of their COVID-19 clinical trials in late 2020.

How bad are we talking here? Put it this way: PMCPA’s blunt rulings against Pfizer are doubly surprising because the UK pharmaceutical industry set up PMCPA in 1993 as a self-regulating body that is staffed with industry insiders. One wonders how more often the PMCPA would have called out Pfizer for violating regulations if it was actually independent of the very corporations it’s supposed to watch over.

Seriously, people. It’s that bad.

But prepare yourself, it’s gonna get worse.

While Pfizer was misleading the public about their vaccine for the last four years, I couldn’t find a single “fact check” that called Pfizer out for any of these incidents. Not one. If you don’t believe me, spend some time searching online, and post anything in the comments below if you find a “fact checker” or “disinformation reporter” or “misinformation academic” that points to Pfizer’s lies, as charged by the PMCPA—Big Pharma’s own regulator.

You can’t find any “fact check” criticism of Pfizer, because the fact checkers are in on Pfizer’s scam to mislead you.

In one of the more ridiculous “fact checks” the group Full Fact sought to bolster confidence in Pfizer’s rushed-to-market COVID vaccine by pointing out that—while Pfizer paid an unprecedented $2.3 billion fine for healthcare fraud—everyone needs to calm the fuck down, because none of Pfizer’s fraud involved a vaccine.

It’s like an oily lawyer arguing in court that—while his used car salesman client was convicted and fined for ripping off buyers and selling hundreds of broken clunkers—those were all Fords, while the cheap lemons he’s now getting rid of are Chevys.

Let’s take a closer look.