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PARIS The mysterious London PR agency sent its pitch simultaneously to social media influencers in France and Germany: Claim the Pfizers Covid-19 vaccine is deadly and regulators and mainstream media are covering it, the message is read and earn thousands of dollars in easy money in exchange.
The claim is false. The purported agency, Fazze, owns a website and describes itself as an influencer marketing platform connecting bloggers and advertisers. But when some of the influencers tried to find out who ran Fazze, the fleeting trail seemed to lead to Russia.
Unbelievable. The address of the London agency that contacted me is bogus, wrote Lo Grasset, a popular French health and science YouTuber with over a million followers, on Twitter on Monday. All of the employees have weird LinkedIn profiles that have been missing since this morning. Everyone has worked in Russia before.
Mirko Drotschmann, a German health commentator with 1.5 million YouTube subscribers, said in a tweet that the PR agency asked him if he wanted to participate in an information campaign on Pfizer’s deaths in exchange for money. After some research, he concluded: Headquarters of the agency: London. Residence of the CEO: Moscow.
Their responses prompted two other social media influencers to come forward and say they were also approached last week with the offer of a partnership to criticize the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. One was offered 2,000 euros. It is not known how many influencers received the solicitations, or if any acted on them.
And it’s not at all clear that there ever was a Fazze agency. Hours after the questions on social media, employee profiles on the agency’s LinkedIn account were gone and someone had cleaned up their Facebook page. His Instagram account has been made private. Their website offers no way to contact the company.
The French Minister of Health, Olivier Vran, denounced the operation on Tuesday, calling it pathetic and dangerous. He did not say whether the government was investigating the matter.
As France tries to speed up efforts to achieve so-called herd immunity against Covid-19 by the summer with faster vaccine deployments, it remains one of the biggest skeptical countries of the vaccines in Europe, with nearly a third of its people saying they don’t want a vaccine. Since the spring, many residents have refused to take the AstraZeneca vaccine after reports it could cause blood clots, prompting the government to largely switch to Pfizer, which more people have been willing to accept. . About 15 percent of the population has been fully immunized.
President Emmanuel Macron reopened restaurants, shops and other sectors of the economy last week that had been more or less closed since November. He is betting that widespread vaccination will be essential to keep the economy running, while attracting tourists after a devastating recession caused by a pandemic. Any new outbreak could shut down parts of the economy, his government has warned.
Posts from the so-called Fazze agency, in broken English, urged social media influencers to create posts and videos on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram to explain that the death rate among those vaccinated with Pfizer is almost 3 times higher than in people vaccinated with AstraZeneca.
In the case of Mr. Grassets, a message from a person identifying himself as Anton boasted that the agency had a large enough budget for an information campaign on Covid-19 and the vaccines offered to the population European Union, including AstraZeneca and Pfizer.
Mr Grasset, who posted screenshots of the messages he received, said Anton was willing to pay for 45- to 60-second videos on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube, warning that the Pfizer vaccine was mortal. Anton also asked him to act as if you have passion and interest in this topic, while avoiding the terms of advertising and sponsorship in publications. The material should be presented as your own independent perspective, the pitch said.
Encourage viewers to draw their own conclusions, to take care of themselves and their loved ones, continues the instruction.
Influencers have described being asked to question why governments are buying the Pfizer vaccine and to portray the European Union, which signed an agreement last month for 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, as a monopoly that harmed public health. They have also been asked to tell their subscribers that the mainstream media is ignoring this topic.
Before the coronavirus broke, Russian trolls were already using vaccine debates to sow discord, according to a 2018 study published in the American Journal of Public Health. Twitter accounts used by Russian agents to meddle in the 2016 presidential election also sent pro and anti-vaccine messages and insulted parents.
In April, a European Union report said the Russian and Chinese media have systematically sought to sow distrust of Western vaccines against Covid-19 in disinformation campaigns targeting the West.
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