Brer Pfizer & The Briar Patch
Brer Pfizer & The Briar Patch
"The Regulators Made Us Do It!"
Project Veritas made some big waves recently with their undercover date expose of gay man Jordan Trishton Walker, purported “Director, Worldwide R&D Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Planning” at Pfizer, whose position on the org chart was supposedly within stones throw of CEO Albert Bourla.
The initial clips went viral because they suggested Pfizer was planning on conducting gain of function research in monkeys in an attempt to keep up with the ever evolving pandemic of variants.
One common criticism of the Project Veritas’ expose is that Jordan Walker, who is supposed to be an MD, and urology residency dropout, doesn’t strike some as a credible expert who could actually hold such a high position at Pfizer.
Take for example the way he speaks:
“Well, one of the things we're exploring is like, why don't we just mutate it ourselves so we could focus on - so we could create and preemptively develop new vaccines, right? So we have to do that. If we're gonna do that though, there's a risk of like, as you could imagine, no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating f**king viruses…
“So, we're like, do we want to do this? So that's like one of the things we're considering. For, like, the future, like maybe we can like, create new versions of the vaccines and things like that”
He sounds a well informed paid actor might, doing his best to mimic alt media conspiracy theory talking points, though to be fair that could just be his informal date persona, right?
Unsurprisingly, in the followup video where Project Veritas ambushes Walker at a pizza joint near the Brooklyn Bridge, he claims he was just “lying to impress a date.”
So let’s break it all down: to begin with we have a black gay man being filmed undercover on a date.
Conservatives on the right might be more inclined to view him negatively than liberals on the left, just because of his sexual preference.
Conservatives might also be more inclined to dismiss his credibility issues and believe his claims against Pfizer, since they are looking for anything negative they can pin on Big Pharma, while those on the left might be more inclined to sympathize with his rather obvious excuse.
It would be hard to design a better psyop if all this entire episode was meant to do was create a sideshow distracting from the whole vaccine-bioweapon-millions-dead-and-maimed narrative while furthering the division between both sides - all without offering any definitive proof of anything, and therefore not really strengthening either sides position in any substantive way.
Then Pfizer responded with a written post that at first glance seemed to deny conducting gain of function, but on second glance did no such thing.
They wrote (emphasis mine):
“In the ongoing development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research.”
Which means that they may have conducted gain of function research before, or they may be conducting it now but in other areas that they conveniently categorize as unrelated to “ongoing development” of the vaccine, but which might nevertheless have overlapping utility for those very same vaccines - eg in the development of COVID-19 antivirals like Paxlovid.
But despite the denial, in the very next sentence it does seem they are conducting a form of gain of function research (emphasis mine):
“Working with collaborators, we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern.”
This sounds like they are genetically modifying the original virus to express the spike protein from variants, if the variant spike has gained function, then this would seem to be gain of function research.
Pfizer goes on to pull the Paxlovid rabbit out of their hat (emphasis mine):
“In addition, to meet U.S. and global regulatory requirements for our oral treatment, PAXLOVID™, Pfizer undertakes in vitro work (e.g., in a laboratory culture dish) to identify potential resistance mutations to nirmatrelvir, one of PAXLOVID’s two components. With a naturally evolving virus, it is important to routinely assess the activity of an antiviral. Most of this work is conducted using computer simulations or mutations of the main protease–a non-infectious part of the virus. In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells. In addition, in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken in cells incubated with SARS-CoV-2 and nirmatrelvir in our secure Biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory to assess whether the main protease can mutate to yield resistant strains of the virus. It is important to note that these studies are required by U.S. and global regulators for all antiviral products and are carried out by many companies and academic institutions in the U.S. and around the world.”
Here again it sounds like Pfizer is conducting what could be considered gain of function research.
For example what qualifies as a “known gain of function mutation”?
It’s hard to predict which mutation might lead to a more contagious or more virulent strain.
And of course the “in vitro resistance selection experiments” could lead to mutation of the main protease - as it is likely already mutating in the bodies of those who are taking Paxlovid and other drugs like it (molnupiravir).
So this line of research is essentially what Jordan Walker was referring to - trying to mutate the virus to keep up with community mutations - only doing it for Pfizer’s antivirals rather than for its vaccines.
If they are already doing it for their antiviral program, as “required by U.S. and global regulators for all antiviral products”, it’s easy to see why they would want to do it for their “vaccine” products as well.
In fact this whole episode might just be used to push regulators in the direction of “requiring” Pfizer and other pharmaceutical giants to conduct such research for their vaccines.
