Does viewership of a heavily edited video make it true? I have seen the famed Project Veritas video numerous times and know it’s been viewed millions of times. There is a constant swirl of noise around the video’s authenticity, the virus’s origin, gain of function (GOF) research and the speed of development of varied Covid vaccines. We will need to address the media credibility challenge more and more as technologies enable rapid evaluation of pathogen threats and the ability for innovators to respond speedily. Especially as packs of vigilante journalists are running wild and unchecked.

Wild, Unverified News is Nothing New

Wild, unverified news is nothing new. However, the speed at which it travels, thanks to technology, is the fodder for conspiracy theorists to create societal chaos. Remember, browsing magazines and papers at the supermarket check-out. The National Enquirer, the entertaining American tabloid newspaper with the wildest headlines, was a welcomed way to pass the time as the long line closed in on the cashier’s conveyor belt.

As leading daily business newspapers increasingly compete for readers and advertising dollars, they have forged ahead with digital access alternatives — often accessible only behind a paywall. Truth — verified information — suddenly comes at a (monthly subscription) cost. In most communities, gone is the young teen on their bicycle riding by and throwing your daily news onto a stoop. Yet, newspapers — the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and all major newspapers always required you to pay a subscription. You tipped the paper delivery — but you paid for the truth.

Even Major Media Can Wander into the Swamp

All media can succumb to the temptation to follow some well-known “titled” pundit with an axe to grind. Remember the swamp created some years ago by a noted Midwestern physician who questioned a Food and Drug Administration-approved for-market cholesterol drug with a baseless theory causing countless people to go off their medications? His words and honed soundbites were covered by most top-tier newspapers and magazines and were amplified by headlines such as “Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good?” Thankfully his pet-peeve theories were soon proven without merit. But how about the countless patients who listened, read and suffered? At what cost — some, their lives. This deadly chaos is still happening thanks to supposed investigational groups that seek to rally the mob.

We expect societal salvation at warp speed. We want life-saving solutions from pharma, policies that prop up the economy from the White House, and public health direction from CDC. When do we want it? We want it now! However, these wild, unchecked and verified videos and news sources — sometimes the voices of individuals with either no first-hand knowledge or with a desire for 15 minutes of fame — add to the pandemic of public health confusion. It is time that we awoke to the reality that conspiracy theorists are allies to the deadly virus that has taken more than six million lives worldwide.

Speed and Sensationalism

Sadly, the rapid popularity of this video is endemic to a society that thirsts for sensationalism and, at the same time, will require immediate medical solutions to future public health threats. It opens the door to these sorts of news grabbers. Media also relies on speed and speculation to attract audiences. However, as it did this time, it must now rally to reject the urge to “cover speculative and dirty news.” This specific video — its yet unproven comments — is woven into the public health risk we now face. The perfect storm of the desire for immediacy and not stopping to ask a critical question of what we see and hear: “Is it true?”

If you don’t pay, perhaps you don’t care. Or you don’t worry if the grabbing headlines that make extraordinary claims are verified or “Veritas.” For science, public health professionals, health communicators and innovators, that is a significant, life-threatening problem. At this point, “I heard it on the news” or “I saw it posted on Twitter” is akin to historical fact. Even if one person says something — a stretch of the imagination without validation — we’re inclined to believe it as “fact.”

Medicine has always been about risk/risk and risk/benefit. The risk of possible side effects alongside the risk of a deadly disease. The benefit of not dying alongside the risk of the unknown. We seem to forget what the world looked like during the COVID lockdown — mental anguish, a collapsing world economy, and ERs straining under the weight of dying patients. We celebrated clinical solutions that reduced the steady death count globally. Now, we look to poke holes in the heroes who saved lives. Enough.

Enough with (Non) Entertaining Lies

The societal desire for “I want it now” invites these sensational moments. But the ability of conspiracy theorists to rally millions of followers or readers to do more than question — to attack science and scientists — has been weaponized to make unverified video footage into the material that political leaders use for self-agenda soapbox speeches and grandstanding TV celebrities to attract viewers as if they don’t have a self-serving agenda. Project Veritas is just the newest digital version of the supermarket tabloid. Based on its track record of lies and more lies, it’s amusing. Not as the Latin translation suggests – truth.

Urgency is a double-edged sword for drug developers, pharma manufacturers, regulators and reporters. Tribal thirst for sensationalism — at all costs and speed — must never be allowed to crush the spirits of scientists who toil at lab benches trying to save lives. That would be too terrible a toil for all.

Yes, cost and speed are framing what some jump to believe as the truth. If so, without letting dedicated journalists and scientists do their jobs, people’s lives will be placed at risk again and again.

The post Covid, Conspiracies and Chaos — Media and Medicine Take Note appeared first on Medika Life.

A video has appeared on Twitter in the last few hours, recorded by Project Veritas. The video purports to show a Pfizer Director, who would appear intoxicated, discussing enhancing the Covid virus with a view to developing future vaccines and directed evolution. The video in question is shown below. Before you view this, a warning.

I questioned the video, particularly the employment status of the individual claiming to be Jordon Walker, MD. The evidence offered by Project Veritas for Jordon Walker’s Pfizer credentials comes directly from James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, and was accompanied by the following text. According to O’Keefe;

“We’ve obtained internal Pfizer docs verifying Jordan Walker as Pfizer Director, Research & Development Strategic Operations. Graduated Yale 2013, Doctor Med at U of Texas Southwestern medical school. His supervisor reports to Mikael Dolsten who reports to Albert Bourla, CEO.”

The text and images left me far from convinced and I pursued the matter further. There is no image of Jordon Walker to be found online (in itself strange, given his past and medical position) and aside from published research during his years at the University of Texas Southwestern and his internship at Tufts Medical Center, no other footprint can be found for the doctor. Here is a link to his Doximity page (includes the research links) and his current medical license from New York State is shown below.

There is a notable lack of social media for the good doctor, in particular his LinkedIn account which was created and never used, highly unusual for a person in his position. By contrast, a “colleague”, Senior Director Allison Blum who Walker would supposedly report directly to (if he is in fact employed at all by Pfizer), has a typical LinkedIn page that looks like this. I have reached out to Ms. Blum to see if she can in fact validate Walker’s employment in her division and will update the piece, if and when she replies.

Two things are immediately apparent. Jordon Walker is either the most reclusive employee ever employed by Pfizer or he actually doesn’t work there. The other option, of course, is that his data is being meticulously scrubbed as you read this. If he does in fact work for Pfizer, then the content of the video is incredibly concerning and the level of individual employed by Pfizer to address treatments that impact our genome is even more shocking.

Until further evidence presents itself, I would recommend not amplifying this until his position is in fact validated.

Here then the video, as it appeared on Twitter

I will update this article as new information becomes available and I would caution people from placing to much faith in this until such time as conclusive evidence is provided for this gentleman’s actual place of employment and if he is, in fact, Jordon Walker, MD.

You can read Pfizer’s response here

Update: 01/26/23

In the course of trying to find a connection between Walker and Pfizer, searches on Yahoo turned this up. The page it leads to on LinkedIn has been deleted. The identical result shows on both Yahoo and DuckDuckGo but has been removed from Google, indicating some form of scrub.

A twitter user just linked us to the fantastic Brian O’Shea who specializes in tracking individuals and he has written a fantastically detailed article that would indicate beyond doubt that Jordon Walker is in fact (although probably no longer) in the employ of Pfizer. Great piece of investigative journalism which you can find here. The image below is from his article.

In response to this, congratulations are due to Project Veritas for an exceptionally revealing piece of journalism and I would now freely encourage you to share both Brian’s article above as proof of the video and the Veritas piece itself. Thanks to Annette Gartland for bringing the article to my attention.

Update: 01/27/23

I’ve just seen the follow up video of Jordon Walker being pursued by James O’Keefe, a day after the events that transpired on the video above. Walker was lured out on the pretense of a date, and states on the video below that he was trying to impress the person he met. This effectively invalidates any of the claims made on the video, offering Pfizer an out, which I have no doubt they will pursue.

We need to get the truth out, but in doing so, we need to preserve our values of decency. There are ways to achieve this without stooping to these levels, reminiscent of the paparazzi pursing a celebrity. Medika believes in honest reporting with verifiable sources and information that is not obtained under false pretenses. We stoop to their level and all is lost.

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