Juno News - October 25, 2022


WHAT？ Reuters ＂fact checked＂ True North？

Topics
pharmaceutical risks and vaccine development Reuters fact check
Mentioned
Pfizer Andrew Rob Roos Janine Small Boodla Albert Bourla Roger Russ Harrison
Why is Doug Ford so afraid of testifying before Emergencies Act commission？ The sad reality of what’s taking place on Toronto’s streets

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

183.57

Word count

1,391

Sentence count

86


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we talk about the controversy surrounding the co-development of a new HIV/AIDS vaccine, CoVaccine, and whether or not it was tested on stopping transmission of the virus before it entered the market.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Yeah, let's jump right into that now.
00:00:02.180 So last week, True North shared this exchange from the European Parliament
00:00:06.380 between Dutch MEP Robert Roos and Janine Smoll of Pfizer.
00:00:12.940 So a question then for you, Ms. Smoll, where I would like a clear answer, please.
00:00:18.340 So there are no misunderstandings.
00:00:21.920 Was the Pfizer COVID vaccine tested on stopping the transmission of the virus
00:00:28.780 before it entered the market?
00:00:32.820 If not, please say it clearly.
00:00:35.980 If yes, are you willing to share the data with this committee?
00:00:40.440 And I really want a straight answer, yes or no, and I'm looking forward to it.
00:00:44.900 Thank you very much.
00:00:47.660 Regarding the question around, did we know about stopping humanisation
00:00:51.660 before it entered the market?
00:00:54.160 No.
00:00:55.300 These, you know, we had to really move at the speed of science
00:00:59.580 to really understand what is taking place in the market.
00:01:02.640 And from that point of view, we had to do everything at risk.
00:01:07.340 I think our Dr. Boodla, even though he's not here,
00:01:10.080 would turn around and say to you himself, if not us, then who?
00:01:14.060 Dr. Boodla actually felt the importance of what was going on in the world.
00:01:18.980 And therefore, as a result of that, we actually spent $2 billion at risk
00:01:26.260 of self-funded money from Pfizer to be able to manufacture as well.
00:01:31.760 First of all, research, develop and manufacture at risk to be able to make sure
00:01:35.960 that we were in a position to be able to help with the pandemic.
00:01:40.080 And I think that's why I feel very good when a recent paper from the Imperial College
00:01:46.420 stated that in the first year of the rollout of vaccines, we saved 4 million people.
00:01:54.560 So from that point of view, I feel that actually we were there when the world needed us
00:01:59.980 to be able to make sure that we were able to help people around the world with vaccination
00:02:05.320 as well as now oral treatment.
00:02:08.440 I would hate to imagine what situation we would be in in the world right now
00:02:12.880 if companies like us did not take those risks, did not do clinical research and developments
00:02:19.100 at scale in order to make sure that we could have a vaccine that we could roll out to the world.
00:02:24.140 So I really, I understand your frustrations.
00:02:26.720 I really do.
00:02:27.720 But I also hope at some point somewhere, you also do appreciate what pharmaceutical companies
00:02:33.200 have done in order to be able to roll out and deliver vaccines at such speed and scale.
00:02:38.360 That was a pretty explosive clip.
00:02:40.980 It was Janine Small talking about how Pfizer moved at the speed of science,
00:02:45.320 which I believe is faster than the speed of sound, not quite as fast as the speed of light,
00:02:49.800 a little bit slower than Superman when he's had a heavy meal even.
00:02:53.320 But the executive was saying that Pfizer did not test against transmission.
00:02:59.000 So there was no scientific basis for the idea that the vaccine that Pfizer was putting out
00:03:04.100 for COVID would protect you against transmission, which means that the basis for vaccine passports,
00:03:11.280 which was that we need to make spaces more safe because we need to only ensure that the
00:03:17.020 vaccinated are able to access them.
00:03:18.960 It meant that that was a big, huge lie from politicians.
00:03:23.620 So we share this clip.
00:03:25.060 Now, this is about as official as it gets.
00:03:27.360 This is an elected official interviewing in an official capacity, an official from a company
00:03:33.760 that has done billions of dollars worth of work on the vaccine file around the world.
00:03:38.580 All of this is to say there is very little about this that is misinformation because we're
00:03:44.360 sharing someone's own words.
00:03:45.960 But that didn't stop Reuters from pouncing by putting a fact check here.
00:03:51.200 And not just that, but saying that True North specifically sharing this clip,
00:03:55.940 we weren't the only outlet that did, was a bit misinformed perhaps.
00:04:01.080 And so, Andrew, it's important to just kind of go through this process.
00:04:04.000 First off, True North often will not share content, videos that are not specifically
00:04:09.340 Canadian news related.
00:04:11.220 But when this video did come up originally, it was first posted by Rob Roos, that MEP,
00:04:16.400 as you said.
00:04:17.140 And that video has over 13 million views on Twitter.
00:04:19.900 And immediately we realized that this kind of blows the lid off of the justification for
00:04:25.740 the mandates placed on Canadians.
00:04:28.540 The idea that the vaccine would stop transmission.
00:04:31.560 That idea that we are told constantly this is to stop the spread of the virus.
00:04:35.400 Well, this testimony from the Pfizer executive in Europe kind of makes the case as though
00:04:41.240 actually no one really knew that to be the case.
00:04:43.260 Politicians didn't know that.
00:04:44.240 So we posted it and I even went through, I posted it myself and I went to great lengths
00:04:49.160 to make sure that I wasn't just copying Rob Roos' video.
00:04:52.460 We went to the original source, the European Parliament sort of media center to get this
00:04:56.280 clip, making sure that what we were getting was 100% accurate.
00:05:00.060 And we don't just throw things up on social media.
00:05:01.940 We do make sure this is accurate stuff.
00:05:04.900 And of course, along comes Reuters.
00:05:06.760 And the Reuters fact check is important to go through.
00:05:08.980 You would think that a company like Reuters, with a fact check team like they have, they
00:05:14.480 would put together a, you know, if they were going to attack this video, they would try
00:05:18.500 and show the biggest video, the biggest tweets of the video, the tweets that got the most
00:05:23.000 traction.
00:05:23.640 But it was strange, Andrew.
00:05:25.140 They didn't do that.
00:05:26.200 They shared the original Rob Roos video.
00:05:29.480 Then they shared our video from True North.
00:05:32.340 They embedded the video into the article.
00:05:33.860 And then they shared a tweet from someone with 18 likes, copying our video, which I
00:05:39.720 just thought to me was very, to me was very strange.
00:05:42.720 Like they're trying to make the case as though True North was somehow involved in this.
00:05:46.060 We, we basically did our own fact check of the fact checkers, which I think is quite
00:05:49.960 required these days, especially what we're getting from Reuters.
00:05:52.780 We did this and we could...
00:05:54.080 Hang on, I've got to call out your misinformation there, Harrison.
00:05:56.460 It's important to deal with this in real time.
00:05:58.160 He has 21 likes on that tweet as of the time we're recording this.
00:06:02.380 Exactly.
00:06:02.660 So you're a Reuters, I'm, I'm sending Reuters to your front door for that.
00:06:06.800 You were three likes off.
00:06:07.880 Who knows what else you're getting wrong?
00:06:09.400 Yeah, exactly.
00:06:10.280 Exactly.
00:06:10.700 Now we have to go through everything else.
00:06:12.620 But the, so in our, in our fact check of the Reuters fact check, what we found was
00:06:17.600 that actually immediately upon Reuters trying to basically label True North video as misleading,
00:06:23.960 Andrew, Twitter users from all across the world descended on that Reuters tweet and basically
00:06:29.240 started sharing videos of Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer saying exactly that, saying
00:06:34.540 that this was going to stop the transmission of the virus.
00:06:37.160 This was going to stop the spread of the virus.
00:06:39.200 And in one tweet, he said the, the, the booster vaccine had a 100% effectiveness in South Africa
00:06:44.500 at stopping the spread.
00:06:46.140 And then of course Pfizer themselves in their official Twitter account, they also were telling
00:06:50.440 people that the, the virus was stopping transmission of the virus.
00:06:54.700 The vaccine was stopping transmission of the virus.
00:06:57.140 Contradictory to what the Pfizer executive said in European parliament.
00:07:00.940 So this all just, I think goes to show you that for so long, for the past two, three years,
00:07:06.580 Andrew, we've been getting fact checks from Reuters, from AP, they also got in on this.
00:07:11.320 We've been getting fact checks from them, which only really uphold a narrative.
00:07:14.820 They don't actually tell us or tell, tell, tell people what was, what, what is wrong about
00:07:19.400 a video.
00:07:20.140 Nowhere do they say True North was wrong.
00:07:21.920 All they do is say this is misleading.
00:07:23.940 So to me, it's actually very sinister that we have fact checkers coming in that are pushing
00:07:28.460 a narrative and aren't actually just telling us what's true and what's false.
00:07:31.740 I don't want to hear narratives.
00:07:33.040 I want to hear the facts from a fact checker.